What Turns Up in the Dark
by eveningsparrow
Summary: The white-coated body slams into the wall, sending spiderweb cracks out from the point of impact. A cloud of dust rises as the figure falls to the dirt. Broken glasses askew, the Quincy tilts his head up from the sand, blood trickling from his mouth. "Good...shot...Kurosaki." Rated for language and some violence.
1. Introduction

**I don't own Bleach. I'm sure you're shocked.**

**AN: This is the first fanfic I've published, so any constructive criticism is always helpful. Thanks again to my friend and editor Ryaku for all of her help.**

**And without further ado, please enjoy my first chapter of What Turns Up in the Dark**

The white-coated body slams into the wall, sending spiderweb cracks out from the point of impact. A cloud of dust rises as the figure falls to the dirt.  
Broken glasses askew, the Quincy tilts his head up from the sand, blood trickling from his mouth.  
"Good...shot...Kurosaki."

He wakes up (When did he pass out? It must have been- ) on one of the cots in the lab. He tries to sit up, realizing, that, as usual, Orihime had healed his wounds. Tilting his head, he sees her standing, golden shield in front of her, two low level arrancar hovering behind her. She must be healing Uryu, he can see her brow furrowed in concentration, but otherwise she looks as well as she usually does.  
He glances down to see the white clad Quincy. His face and torso are still covered in blood, and he's lying completely still, limbs slightly akimbo.  
Very still.  
"Uryu?" He glances up at Orihime for signs of concern, but her eyes are closed. "Hey, Uryu!"  
The dark haired boy tilts his head and opens his eyes a fraction. "Quit shouting, Kurosaki. You'll reopen your wounds."  
Quickly slipping back into normalcy, he shoots back immediately. "Wounds? You mean these little scratches you managed to get me with?"  
"Hah," Uryu snorts, and turns his head back, closing his eyes.

_Black blade. _  
_Red blood. White cloth._  
_"Did I do that?" _  
_No - no - I couldn't have - I can't have -_  
_Dust._  
_Water. So much. And the shark -_  
_- No - I can't let him die._  
_But its his arm that stabs him, the black blade, over and over -_  
- He cuts off the scream with his fist as he jolts upright.  
He pushes himself up against the wall, catching his breath, slowing it down, gradually unclenching his hands, finding no black blade in them.  
Ichigo closes his eyes, feeling sweat drip down his nose. Opening them, he finds his gaze resting on Uryu, sleeping on the other side of the cell. His cape has been primly folded into a rectangular pillow, his shoes, glasses tucked safely inside, in a neat pair by his feet, hands clasped across his chest. He's done this, a little ritual, every night, and Ichigo finds himself smiling for a moment, before hastily turning away.  
He stares at the wall instead, not wanting to fall into sleep. The wall is gritty and dirty, like the bars that form the door, and in the silence he can almost hear them slamming for the first time.  
_"Uryu?"_  
_"Yes, Kurosaki?"_  
_"Why are we still alive?"_  
_Uryu's face turned away from him, adjusting his glasses. "Well, there are several possible reasons..."_  
_He almost grins. (_"I fell down the stairs."_)_  
_Ishida's a terrible liar._  
The image, in his head again.  
_Black blade through Uryu through through straight through -_  
The perfect soldier. The perfect _weapon._  
_That's _why they're still alive.  
Always on the edge - always there. Whenever he gets too desperate, too close to dead -  
He turns again, almost reflex, to look at Uryu, breathing evenly, face relaxed.  
Oxygen returns to his lungs.  
Eventually, he gets back to sleep.

Uryu is jarred awake by the sound of Ichigo tossing back and forth.  
He doesn't move, doesn't open his eyes, just listens to Ichigo's thrashing. His arms tense, uncertain, wary of going to wake him, crossing the invisible line in the middle of the room.  
A gasp, almost a whimper, Uryu shifts, resolved -  
A jolt of sudden motion, and then all noise is cut off. He freezes, opening his eyes a fraction to see Ichigo's silhouette, sitting upright against the wall. His hands reach up, covering his eyes, and Uryu steels himself to stay lying down.  
Ichigo's breathing steadies itself, and Uryu's stomach unclenches, he closes his eyes.  
He takes moment of indulgence, trying to imagine he is back home, tries to construct the walls of his room, every crack -  
- _splashing water on his face, _How do I know this isn't an illusion-? _nightmares of Kyoka Suigetsu, perfect hypnosis, memorizing every crack, every bump in the paint - this has to be real, it has to, has to - _  
He shakes his head, frustrated at the obvious question rising again from that memory.  
_Why let us see each other?_  
Wouldn't Ichigo fight harder, when they put both of them into the arena, fight more _desperately_ if he thought he was fighting an enemy? Thought he was fighting to save someone, perhaps? _(Orihime, of course. Always Orihime.)_  
Maybe, he puzzles out, mind turning in the same ruts, Kyoka Suigetsu can't work at long distances, separated between worlds. Maybe it can't create multiple illusions at once, Aizen is too occupied with the war. Maybe Aizen was too busy to ever come back to Hueco Mundo and show them the release.  
_Maybe he thought it must be itching for another chance to kill _you_._  
He shoves the thought down, buries it deep, letting his eyes open again, make out Ichigo's nodding head in sleep.  
He smiles faintly, and lets out a breath.

Kurosaki is the one that starts it, much to his annoyance.  
"C'mon Ishida, what's the problem? Your glasses broken?" he shouts as he speeds away from another barrage of arrows.  
Uryu reaches up, adjusts his glasses."Says the one who was just brought to his knees by a clown."  
Uryu hears the clown-like arrancar make a noise that might have been defensive. It's hard to distinguish expressions, he notes, when the speakers head is in the dirt. Ichigo smirks slightly, and Uryu finds himself mirroring the expression.  
"So what does that make you, then?" Kurosaki yells after him as Uryu leaps out of reach of another Getsuga Tensho. "One of the clown's troupe?"  
Ishida flies behind the shinigami, pulling out Selle Schneider. Kurosaki swings around and blocks the attack with his blade.  
Uryu grins, feeling spiritual energy pulled off of Zangetsu There is a hint of a snarl on the shinigami's face as he twists Zangetsu to throw the blade aside, but it shifts suddenly, forceably to a grin as Ishida skids away."It all makes sense now. You left home to join the circus." He turns around to parry an Arrancar that has risen from the dust for a last charge, and sends it flying. "What are you, then, a trapezee artist?"  
"You certainly aren't," He braces himself, launches another barrage of arrows. Kurosaki dodges, only to trip backwards over another defeated opponent. "You have all the coordination of a dancing bear. Who taught you to fight?"  
Ichigo straightens quickly and parries his next volley. Uryu dodges the returning bolts and continues as he speeds away. "Although, you would certainly make a good clown. You have the goofy hair already."  
"You wanna talk about goofy?" The shinigami yells as he launches himself back into the fight. "What about that cape of yours? What are you going to do, fly around with it like some cartoon hero?"  
"Oh, as if you can talk about uniforms. The shihakusho has enough fabric to make your own circus tent." The Quincy smirks as he twists the shinigami's blade away with his bow.  
"As long as you don't try to sew it into a dress, like you did for Kon." Kurosaki retorts, launching a Getsuga Tensho through Uryu's bow.  
The blast hits him, throwing him backwards into the wall, clawing at his insides. He lands, gasping, his bow fading away.  
He sees Ichigo's feet through half open eyes, feels the thump as he sits down beside him.  
"You still with it?"  
Uryu looks up. "Of course," He says, biting back a hiss of pain at the wound in his side. "that shot was weak, even for you."  
Ichigo huffs, half heartedly, looking around at the cratered ceiling. "Well," he states finally. "That was fun."  
"Hah," Uryu snorts, but he can't argue. The barren room could almost have been Urahara's underground lair, if you threw in a few dead trees, and this just a training match, nothing to it.  
The arrival of the retrieving arrancar, spiritual binders in hand, shatters the illusion, but Ichigo ignores them, standing up and proffering a hand.  
There is a split second of indecision, but he reaches up and takes Ichigo's hand, hauling himself to his feet, grinding his teeth together to keep a straight face.  
"C'mon," Ichigo says, grabbing his shoulder to steady him, looking around at the arrancar. "Let's go see Orihime."

Uryu darts to the left as one of the arrancar charges Ichigo, skidding through the sand. He watches, bow frozen, as their blades lock for a moment, then Ichigo flings the creature aside with a Getsuga. He sees Ichigo's face, in a lopsided grin, as the shinigami spins around to face him. Uryu raises his bow before glimpsing second Arrancar leaping out of the dust behind Ichigo. Uryu yells a warning without thinking, only to see Ichigo stumble, eyes wide.  
He bites his lip, then lifts his bow higher to shoot the arrancar, hurling the creature to the ground. _An arrow launched, hollows dissolving, back to back with Ichigo - _As the shinigami turns on the rising arrancar, he feels his face twitch into something like a smile.  
He clings to this semblance of happiness as he is carried through the halls to the lab, Ichigo shuffling beside him on a wounded leg. When Orihime enters, the smile slips away from the tear tracks on her swollen, bruised face. She is limping nearly as badly as Ichigo, but still offers up a uneven smile when she walks over to heal them.  
His stomach twists. He glances over at Ichigo, whose face is tight, and whose returning smile to Orihime looks more like a grimace. Ichigo looks back at him, and jerks his head in something that might have been a nod.  
Neither of them will hold back again.

_Pain -_  
_- Black blade _  
_That has to be Ichigo (He has to be alive)_  
_That can't be Ichigo (He can't have -_  
_alive alive he's alive -_  
_- no - don't -_  
_Shark._  
_"You cannot fight me. Surrender, or the Quincy will die first."_  
_- my bow - I can't -_  
_Drowning._  
_crushed by an ocean -_  
_"Whatever,"_  
_Collapse._  
_"Kill him. It's not like I care."_  
_(This is wrong)_  
_"I didn't even want him here. I'm just here to win."_  
_(This isn't what happened)_  
_"Why don't I do it for you?"_  
_(He wouldn't -_  
_Cold blade - blood -_  
"Uryu."  
_Ichigo's face swallowed by a smirk, black pits of eyes meeting his own -_  
"Uryu!"  
He shoves outward, arms colliding with Ichigo as he gasps for air.  
As he regains himself, he feels Ichigo's fingers relax from his arm before he can think about the impulse to pull away.  
"You alright?"  
"Yes, of course." He reaches up to adjust his glasses before realizing that he took them off. Coughing, he flicks hair out of his eyes to cover. "You didn't need to get up."  
"Eh, I was still awake. You're too noisy to sleep."  
"Well, that does explain why I was able to get to sleep, you weren't snoring."  
"Heh. Better than you pacing."  
It is dark. They sit in silence, he can't see Ichigo's face clearly.  
"Uryu?"  
"Yeah?"  
"What do you think is going on? With the others, you know?"

"Uryu?"  
"I'm thinking, Kurosaki. Regardless of how foreign a concept that may be to _you..._"  
"Alright, I get it."  
"...Well... let's see." A sigh. "Sado, Renji, and Kuchiki-san are probably all fighting their way across the Menos forest to get here, unless the shinigami dragged them back to fight Aizen, in which case they probably had to wall them in with Hollows to keep them from leaving." A faint chuckle. "Let's see - well, you left Kon in control of your body _and_ school's back in session, which means that he's probably groped half the female population." A groan. "I imagine there'll be a few lawsuits waiting for you when you get back. It's a pity your father is a doctor and not a lawyer."  
"Hah. Between that and Tatsuki _already_ being pissed at me, I'm screwed when I get home. Maybe I should just camp out at your place."  
"Pfft. Arisawa-san will forgive you when you bring back Inoue-san. Besides, there's no way I'd let you demolish my apartment. Bad enough I have to share _living space_ with you here."  
"So it bothers you to share living space, eh...?"  
"What? Hey! Kurosaki, get your feet _off_ me!"  
"Make me."  
"Kurosaki! Hey! My glasses are in there, you dolt!"

...  
"Uryu?"  
"Yes?"  
"Thanks."  
He sleeps soundly.


	2. Needle and Thread

**I think that you can all intelligently assume that I don't own Bleach from here on out.**

**AN: First of all, I apologize for any weird formatting you got on the first chapter. That should be fixed now – thanks for pointing it out. Secondly: Wow! Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter. You guys are awesome. Thanks especially to Gemini24 for my very first review!**

**Just so you all know, about 15 chapters of this have already been written, and I'm planning on updating three times a week – Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday for as long as I have enough chapters to fill it. I'll let you know if/when the schedule changes, and feel free to let me know if you'd prefer a different schedule.**

**Since I got the question, yes, there will be a central pairing (as well as a couple side pairings) to this, but not for quite a while. I would tell you, but where's the fun in that? ( It is pretty easy to guess though. :D )**

**So, without further ado, I'll leave you to your reading. **

The white fabric of the Quincy uniform is torn at the sleeve.  
Neither of them remembers when it happened, they don't even notice until they are back in their cell. Ichigo immediately attacks his food, pausing only when he sees Ishida staring ferociously at his left sleeve. Finally, the Quincy sighs and takes off his belt, laying it across the floor, much to Ichigo's confusion. Without a word of explanation, he pushes aside a flap to reveal a concealed zipper, which he opens to remove a needle and spool of thread.  
At this, Ichigo can't keep silent any longer. "You brought a _sewing kit?_"  
Ishida looks at him as though he has the IQ of a cucumber. "Yes."  
"To _Hueco Mundo._"  
"Your point?"  
"Land of Hollows, murderous arrancar, and Aizen."  
"Well," said the Quincy defensively, obviously following a completely _different_ chain of reasoning. "It's not a very _good_ one, I didn't have a lot of time..."  
"But... that... what..." Ichigo splutters, cutting Uryu off. "What were you going to _do_ with it? Were you planning on giving the Espada fashion tips, or making alterations to Orihime's dress before you rescued her?"  
Which was, evidently, entirely the wrong thing to ask, as Uryu slumps forward and looks at him dejectedly. "_You have no idea._ That dress. It is an insult to everything - _everything. _Whoever designed it should be _shot._"  
Ichigo starts to say that whoever designed it was probably an arrancar, so they'll end up killing them anyway, but he can't get more than two words out before Uryu continues, completely ignoring him. "The shape is all wrong - what imbecile ever came up with the idea for those shoulders? - and the -"  
_Note to self: Never, ever, mention anything even remotely related to clothing design to, around, or within hearing distance of Ishida Uryu. _  
"... and the sea cucumber who designed the overcoat is worse than dirt - what moronic cretin would ever make someone wear..."  
_I suppose it's a good thing he never ran into Nnoitra. _Ichigo thinks aimlessly, too exhausted to try to interrupt him. _He might have had a heart attack. _  
"... it's not even worth trying to save, when we get back I will burn that foul, heinous thing the first chance I get." the Quincy sighs and flops over his knees, evidently out of steam. Ichigo looks up, relieved, and watches as Ishida takes a deep breath and picks up the needle and thread. He stitches the sleeve with some difficulty, working with only one hand, but finishes with a flourish, a satisfied expression on his face. Ichigo considers for a moment asking why he bothers, as the edges of Uryu's cape have been ragged since they have been here, but then realizes that question would almost inevitably lead to yet another tirade of explanations of things he really, really could do without knowing.  
He looks up at the other boy, cradling the spool of thread and the needle in his palm, about to tuck them away, faint frown lines around his blue eyes.  
"Oy, Uryu," He interjects, making the Quincy look up. "I tore my shihakusho a while ago, and it's been bugging me. Do you think you could...?"  
On any other day Uryu would have teased him or made him beg, but he doesn't now, and Ichigo knows he made the right call. He adjusts his glasses and says stiffly. "Well, I suppose, since you asked. And at least then I won't have to look at the ragged state that poor piece of clothing is in."  
Ichigo snorts, stifling a smile. "You are so OCD."  
"I am _not._" Uryu retorts, pushing his glasses up his nose again. "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder refers to a psychiatric condition characterized..."  
"Alright, alright, didn't ask for the textbook definition." Surprisingly, Uryu doesn't even bother to reply, distracted by the tear Ichigo has pointed out in the shoulder of his jacket. His hands dart back and forth, Ichigo can feel the faint breeze they create, and then the Quincy is tying off the thread and sitting back, smirking slightly.  
Later, when Ichigo cranes his head around to look at the stitching, he can see that Uryu has sewn a tiny Quincy cross in white thread, just above the tear, and he doesn't mind at all.

She had bruises around her eyes today.  
She had bruises around her eyes, soon to be matched by bruises on his knuckles as he slams his fist into the wall.  
"Fuck."  
Slam.  
"Fuck fuck shit fuck."  
Slam.  
"Fuckin' bastard _fuckers_."  
_SlamSlamSlam._  
He wants to destroy something, he wants his sword in his hand to smash hollows, smash Ulquiorra, smash Grimmjow, smash Aizen, he wants to take his bare hands and crush the mask of the arrancar who stood behind Orihime and smirked and smirked and _smirked_.  
His incoherent yell echoes through their cell, drowning out the other voice that shouts his name, as he slams into the wall.  
"Kurosaki!"  
There are hands on his shoulder, dragging his arm away from slamming into the wall again, and he spins around blindly, ready to attack, until he sees blue eyes _Uryu _scared blue eyes _-black sword hand on his wrist kill kill _kill.  
No.  
He breathes, and sees the shock fade from the blue eyes, the fingers relax on his arm. He pulls away, stepping back and slumping against the wall, breathing still ragged.  
"You idiot." Uryu says, but much more quietly than usual. Ichigo looks up at him through the gap between his arms. The Quincy kneels down in front of him, pulling his belt off again and rifling through the pouches. He takes out a vial of antiseptic and a tiny roll of bandages. "You've completely shredded your hands."  
"How much stuff," He croaks back. "Do you _have_ in there?"  
"I told you, I didn't have much time, I was more focused on getting the Seele Schneider..."  
Ichigo doesn't even bother to correct him, sitting in silence as the Quincy daubs antiseptic onto his knuckles and then wraps the bandages around his hands.  
"It's just...she..." He stutters, breaking the silence.  
He feels the hands pause, fingers against his wrist. "I know."

He wakes up to a yelp and muttered curses. He looks around and finally distinguishes Ishida's silhouette, huddled upright..  
"What the hell, Ishida?"  
"Needle - dammit, if I could just see."  
"What, you don't have a flashlight in that belt of yours?"  
"Shut up, Kurosaki."  
He scoots over, pushing himself up to see better. "What are you doing, anyway?"  
"Well," He can't see it, but he can picture a blush spreading across the Quincy's pale cheeks. "The edge of my cape was tearing off, so I thought, well, Inoue-san has to do with that hideous dress all the time..."  
Realizing that Uryu isn't likely to get to the point anytime soon, he pulls himself closer to see the object in the boy's open palm.  
He struggles to make out the details in the darkness, but he finally distinguishes the object as a half completed white flower, made of fabric ragged at the edges, clearly torn from Uryu's robe.  
He looks at it for a few moments, and there is a lump in his throat.  
Reaching down, he tears off a piece of the black shihakusho that had been dangling off at his ankle. "It'll need leaves."  
Uryu takes the piece of fabric silently, picking up his needle again. "Go to sleep, Kurosaki."  
He smiles.


	3. Playing Doctor

**AN: Wow! Thank you so much to all of my readers, to everyone who's added this as a favorite, and particularly to Gemini24 and Kudosx for their incredibly generous reviews!**

**Gemini24 – I'm so glad you liked Uryu in the last chapter! I was smiling a lot when I wrote that section, and I'm so glad it made you grin too. :D**

**Kudosx – Thank you! One of the things I was worried about with this was that the humor and the sadness in the story would work together and wouldn't feel jarring. I'm glad it comes across so well! Thank you so much. **

**It seems like there are some problems with readability on these chapters, so any suggestions as to how I can improve would be great. Would it be easier if I double spaced the whole thing and used lines to separate sections? Indents? A different font? Just let me know.**

**Enjoy, and thanks for reading! **

They don't even get to finish dinner.  
Uryu hears them first, Ichigo only notices when he sees the white coated boy stiffen, his hand freeze above his bowl. Then he can make out the voices.  
"Little bitch, that stung like shit..."  
"It was your own fault, don't whine."  
"Which one should we take? Her perfect _Kurosaki-kun_?"  
He can see them now, in the shadows outside the door. The second one pauses.  
He stands up, dropping his spoon, ignoring the muttered "Ichigo..."  
"No," The arrancar says placidly, as though he has not seen the shinigami stand up. "We can't let her heal the damage until morning, and it would be troublesome if he died in the night. We'll take the Quincy."  
"The hell you -" He slams against the bars.  
"Kurosaki!" Uryu says sharply from his seat on the floor.  
He turns to him, furious. "You don't think -"  
"Ichigo," The Quincy places his spoon in his bowl and rises. "It's fine."  
But his eyes are afraid - _like I can't tell, been in this cell for godknowshowlong thinks I can't tell scared scared bleedingbleedingbleeding out on the floor _- "The hell it is!"  
And he grabs him by the shoulder because he isn't just going to walk out like that and let them - but the taller one backhands him and he stumbles and Ishida glares at him, and he thinks of Rukia _just try coming after me _and he hates Ishida for it _I will never forgive you._  
The door shuts.

"Dammitdammitdammit."  
He paces across the cell, wildly, because if he stops moving he will think, if he stops moving he will hear each thump against the wall and he will know.  
"Fuckshitfuck"  
And he hates it and he hates them and he hates _him_ and he hates Orihime smiling with the bruises under her eyes hates Rukia saying _Ichigo, run!_  
There are no yells, no screaming, nothing but the pounding against the walls, and he smashes his bowl against the wall and then picks up Uryu's and smashes it too and for a moment he can see his frown as he adjusts his glasses, berating him for being an idiot, _now _what were they going to eat from? and he hates himself for it.  
There is silence.  
He hears scuffling, a dead weight being dragged through the dirt, and he can't listen to it any longer. "Uryu!"  
"Fuckin' prat." He hears one of them growl, and he has to see him but he doesn't want to see it.  
And he can hear ragged breathing _alive_ and there are half-closed blue eyes _thankgodthankgod _and he shouts his name again without even thinking about it.  
And his glasses fall off into the dirt, and Uryu doesn't frown, doesn't demand that they stop and pick up his glasses, didn't they know those were expensive? and he _hates_ it and he is yelling mindlessly, disjointed strings of all the curses he knows and Uryu's name over and over and they are laughing, and Uryu's feet are still dragging and his glasses are still in the dirt.  
Silence. He finally breathes.  
He kneels down and reaches carefully through the bars to pick the glasses up. One of the lenses is cracked, and the frame is bent at the corner. He tries to straighten it a little, reaching to find the cleanest part of his shihakusho to polish the lenses with.  
Then he sits down, and he doesn't cry.

He staggers into the cell, off balance, eyes unfocused. Ichigo grabs his shoulders to steady him, and winces as he hears the gasp of pain at the contact. As gently as he can, he helps Uryu lower himself to the floor without falling, kicking aside the shards of the broken bowl to clear a space for him. Uryu takes a deep breath when he has laid down, and then gasps with pain again.  
Shit. He _knew _that meant something important - he wracks his brains to try to remember what he had heard Yuzu saying about the little boy in the car accident who was in pain when he took deep breaths. ..._fractured ribs... _that was it. And they had kept telling the kid that he had to keep breathing deeply, but he can't remember why.  
"...chigo..."  
"Uryu," He focuses on him hastily, watching his dark blue eyes swim and flutter back and forth. Swelling is rising under his left one "Uryu? Uryu, can you hear me? Look at me."  
Uryu meets his eyes, and he notices in some distant corner of his mind, how odd he looks without his glasses. Very not-Ishida.  
"...glasses..." The other boy murmurs, and Ichigo immediately swivels around to retrieve his spectacles.  
He realizes when his fingers leaves a stain on the lenses that his hands are covered in blood. "Shit, Uryu."  
"Don't... tell me... you broke them..." He says, breathing shallow but sounding a little bit more like himself, and Ichigo smiles weakly.  
"Idiot. You're bleeding." He says, his throat tightening. "Where...?" But then his fingers find the wound, damp but well disguised by the darkness and the other stains, across Uryu's left shoulder.  
_Stop the bleeding._  
He takes a deep breath and starts ripping shreds from his shihakuso - there's nothing he can do to make them sterile, but he only has to keep the other boy alive until morning - and pushing them over the wound.  
"...chigo"  
"Uryu?" He mutters distractedly.  
"...Kurosaki." Uryu says more firmly, and Ichigo looks at him. He has lifted a hand feebly and is gesturing to his side. "Belt."  
"Right, right," He winces, angry with himself for not having thought of it sooner. His fingers dart carefully to pull off the belt, feeling along its length in the darkness for the pocket. Needle and thread clatter to the floor, and he pulls out bandages, after which a handful of tiny medicine tubes roll out. Minuscule labels swim before his eyes, indistinguishable in the darkness. "Uryu, what...?"  
There is a weak cough that might have been an attempt at a disparaging snort. "Glasses."  
Ichigo picks them back up off of the ground, holding them by the frames to avoid getting any more blood on the lenses. He lowers them over Uryu's eyes, trying to keep one hand over the wound, and notices that the other boy's hand clenches and the muscles around his eyes tighten as the wire piece presses against the swollen left side of his face. He tears another strip of his shihakusho away, folding it into a semblance of a cushion and tucking it between the metal and Uryu's bruise.  
"Thanks..." the other boy murmurs under his breath, barely audible as Ichigo turns to grab the vials, but he breathes a little more easily for it. Squinting in the dark, left eye nearly swollen shut, Uryu nods at one of the tubes of medicine. "'ll stop the bleeding."  
Ichigo unscrews the top and tips the contents into Uryu's mouth, but is disappointed to find there are only a few drops. The other boy echoes his thoughts "Might not be enough..." and Ichigo redoubles his pressure on the wound, wracking his brains to remember what else his father and sisters would do for someone that was bleeding out. _...feet._ He remembers his dad instructing Yuzu. _Elevate his feet._  
He looks around, trying to think. _Elevate his feet, elevate his feet._ Pillow. He needs a pillow. Oh.  
He reaches with his free hand for the clasp of Uryu's cape, thinking to fold it into a makeshift pillow, when he hears the other boy mutter. "Kurosaki."  
Ichigo's hands pause on the clasp. "Anesthetic." Uryu finishes.  
He allows himself a moment to think _Just how much stuff...?_ before he gathers up the vials again and shows them to Uryu.  
As he tugs the cape out from under Uryu, he can hear the boy's breathing gradually ease, even as he mutters, "Kurosaki, what...?", edge of disdain crawling back up into his voice.  
"S'posed to elevate your feet." He replies, folding the cape clumsily into a rectangle and pushing it under his feet, taking his hand off of the wound momentarily. He shifts back to place his weight over the wound again and is relieved to find that the blood is no longer leaking through the scraps. He breathes freely again for a moment, trying to run through what else his family would do for trauma victims. He momentarily wishes he had a fraction of Ishida's seemingly encyclopedic knowledge, before shaking his head, trying to focus. He remembers Karin laying a hand on a woman's abdomen, asking if it hurt. He tries to bring it up in his mind, trying to remember the details. He lifts his left hand off the wound, shifting it down Ishida's side and putting pressure on his upper left side. "Does this hurt?"  
Uryu coughs, but his fists don't clench and his face doesn't tighten. "I don't have a ruptured spleen, Kurosaki."  
Oh. So that's what it was. "Oh. Okay. Good." He mutters, not even bothering to react to the jibe.  
He lifts a hand to scratch his face and realizes that the blood on it has dried. Cautiously, he puts two fingers under the scraps and feels the wound. It's still wet, but there is no fresh blood welling up. Letting out a deep breath, he takes his weight off of the wound and reaches for the bandages he had dropped from Uryu's belt. Once he has retrieved them, he leans over the other boy. "I'm going to help you sit up, okay?" Uryu frowns slightly, but he nods, and Ichigo slides one arm around his back and slowly raises him off the ground, holding the scraps in place with his other hand, ignoring his proximity to the other boy in his worry over the blood and the wound and how tightly he can wrap the bandage around without cutting off circulation. He ties it off, muttering "That okay?" In Uryu's ear. When he nods slightly, not looking at him, he lowers him back to the floor, trying to keep the fractured ribs from hitting the ground too hard. Uryu breathes deeply and closes his eyes for a moment, while Ichigo sits, trying to think of what else he can do for him _spent enough time __waiting_, when another memory occurs to him. Coming home, his house a flurry of motion _huge accident two streets over_ and Yuzu tearing through the house with his bedsheets trailing after her, his dad yelling from another room _we have to keep them warm._  
Ok. Keep Uryu warm. He wishes he had bedsheets that he could pull over the boy, but there are no blankets in the cell - for a moment he pictures Yuzu running in to their cell with a chain of blankets, berating "Ichi-nii" for not taking better care of his patient - and half smiles. He thinks about his options. He's already using the Quincy cape to keep Uryu's feet elevated, he supposes he could take off the top half of his shihakusho, but that's hardly in any condition to hold in heat.  
He sighs, but without any real feeling. He'd have to stay close to the boy _anyway_ in the night to make sure his condition didn't change, in any case.  
He scoots over and lies down directly next to Uryu, shifting his arms behind his head. Uryu is silent for a moment, and Ichigo stares deliberately at the ceiling, not looking at him. When he speaks, his voice attempts scorn, but he stutters. "K-kurosaki?"  
"Have to keep you warm. Keeps you from going into...shock, or something." Uryu snorts faintly.  
They lie in silence for a few moments, and Ichigo thinks for a moment that Uryu has fallen asleep when he hears his voice again. "I'm not going to die, Kurosaki."  
"Damn right you're not." He says forcefully. Uryu lets out a deep breath.  
Ichigo falls asleep with cobalt blue swimming against his eyes.

Orihime heals him in the morning. Her eyes are red, but her hands are steady.  
Ichigo's aren't.


	4. Fraying

**AN: Wow! Thank you _everyone_ for reading. I'm so glad to see so many of you enjoying this – there's no better motivation to write more. Thanks especially to Haddrell, Gemini24, and ReadReedRed for their reviews, I always appreciate seeing your thoughts.**

**A couple readers have mentioned increasing the spacing to make this more readable, but I'm having trouble getting that to translate through the uploading system. Anyone who's worked with this before, advice?**

He is sprawled out in the dirt, shoveling spoonfuls of... well, he was trying not to think about what the glop actually consisted of, but it seemed like it was at least _intended_ to be food, into his mouth.  
As he slurps up another spoonful loudly he notices Ishida's eye twitch.  
He takes an even bigger spoonful and smacks it loudly, mouth open.  
Ishida closes his eyes, turning his head away slightly and pushing up the bridge of his glasses.  
Ichigo chomps on a third spoonful, a smirk lurking in his eyes, and Ishida sighs. "Would it kill you to eat more quietly?"  
And he doesn't know if it's his tone or the disdain in his expression or the fact that he is exhausted and he's been eating this tasteless glop and putting up with Ishida's goddamn prissy attitude for - but something flips a switch in Ichigo's brain that says _fight._  
He can feel his muscles tensing, ready to yell, to shove Ishida's bowl out of his hands, to -  
And Uryu looks up at him, fingers brushing over the stitches on his sleeve.  
- and he forces his way against the tide to breathe. "Yeah, whatever. Not all of us can be as _dainty_ as you."  
"What?" And he can see Ishida's face go red, and he feels his muscles relax even as the Quincy splutters out a retort. All systems normal.  
So he understands when Uryu sighs heavily some evenings, and folds in on himself, like a collapsing tent, focused entirely on his sewing. He doesn't try to talk to him, doesn't tease him, because Uryu is fighting against the tide as well.  
And if Ichigo slams his blade into the arrancar more forcefully that morning - well, at least he still remembers who the enemy is.  
He has to.

Uryu leaves the thread dangling and the spool clatters to the floor. Ichigo barely has time to turn around and see the other boy staring at the loose string with a loathing that is startling, before Uryu swears loudly and jerks upright. He walks over to the wall and slams his fists against it, bowing his head until it rests against the wall, and muttering all the time.  
Ichigo stands up cautiously - he has never before seen a truly enraged Uryu. Angry? Occasionally. Annoyed? Constantly. Pissed? Frequently. But not enraged. Uryu had seemed to define control by his very essence. This was unnatural, an explosive to be handled with extreme caution. He treads quietly, afraid that any sound might set of an explosion of this foreign Uryu, and listens.  
"Fuckin stupid thread screwing me the _fuck _over."  
One step.  
"Fuckin blasted _Ryuken _only having _fucking _surgical thread in his _fucking _cabinets."  
And another,  
"Fuckinasshole Urahara saying we were in a _fucking _hurry and then making me wait for half a _fucking _hour,"  
Careful now.  
"And I could have been packing my belt but _we_ didn't have enough _fucking _time."  
Right behind him.  
"Fuckin" A breath "Cheapskate manufacturers shortchanging us on thread all the _fucking _time."  
He raises his hand, puts it carefully on Uryu's shoulder. He turns around.  
"When we get back," Ichigo says deliberately. "We'll find the manufacturing factory, and we'll trash the place."  
A deep breath, two, and Ishida's face reconstructs itself. He nods, but without mirth.  
Turning back to the floor, Uryu picks up the needle and empty spool and tucks them back in his belt. He walks back towards Ichigo, turning so that he is behind him. "Hold still. I need to tie this off."  
And Ichigo can breathe.

He stares up from the lab cot at the golden shield in the air above him. His eyes flicker to the other cot where Uryu is laying, breathing evenly _face contorted blue eyes blazing._  
So what. It wasn't as if he was responsible for the idiot's mental stability. If he was so thrown out of whack by running out of stupid thread, that was his problem. Crazy as fuck, running his mouth off about dresses and shit all the time. Dumbass.  
Aw, Hell.  
"Orihime," he mutters faintly, so the arrancar behind her won't hear. She shifts around the table, kneeling down by one of her fairies as though she is consulting with him. The arrancar barely spares her a glance.  
"Kurosaki-kun," She whispers. "What is it?"  
"It's," His eyes flicker back to Uryu and he can feel his face flush. "It's nothing important, really, I just," He checks that the arrancar is still talking with its comrade. "Just wondered if you might be able to - to find a spool of thread around here somewhere, or something. Without," He adds "Getting in trouble, of course."  
She nods, and there is a trace of something hard in her face he has never seen there before. "Of course. But...?"  
"It's," He closes his eyes. "For Uryu."  
When he looks back up, there is a edge of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "For Ishida-kun. Of course. That's very sweet of you, Kurosaki-kun."  
"Yeah, yeah," He says, looking away and trying not to blush. "Thank you, Orihime."  
She smiles and steps away, looking at the Arrancar behind her.  
It's two days later when she palms the spool of thread and tucks it under the sleeve of his shihakuso. He breathes a "Thanks," and smiles at her, ignoring his faintly churning stomach, before they are escorted out along the corridor to their cell. He waits until they have already started on their meal before he pulls it out of his sleeve, as though it was something he had forgotten. "Ah," He says, making Uryu look up from his meal. Ichigo looks at a point two feet to the right of the other boy's head "Oh yeah, Orihime got you some more thread. Thought you might like it."  
He expects Uryu to respond with some snark about how he didn't need to be taken care of, thankyouverymuch, but when he can bring himself to look at the other boy's face it is to find him staring at the spool as though it is the strangest thing he has ever seen. When finally he reaches out to take it, it is slowly and deliberately, as though he is afraid it will vanish like the mirages that can't happen in Hueco Mundo.  
Uryu tucks the spool into his palm, continuing to examine it as though trying to memorize every detail, and then slips it into the pouch on his belt. Still looking down, he says. "Thank you, Kurosaki."  
When he thinks about it, trying to sleep later that night, it makes him feel warm in spite of himself.

It is dark, and he is lying awake, listening to the sound of Ichigo shifting back and forth, shihakusho scuffing the dirt. The shinigami is in pain, but neither of them say anything.  
He could see shadows under Orihime's eyes today. She always stands up straighter and smiles more for them on days like this, but her golden shield shatters more quickly. They'd never complain, always grinning at her when she bites her lip and starts to apologize, Ichigo insisting that she had done a perfect job, and Uryu telling her that it didn't matter, Kurosaki's head was so full of rocks that he was practically made of them too. She always smiles at this, faintly, but a real smile at least, and they'd take that as a victory here.  
He hears a pause in the scuffling on the floor, and wonders if Ichigo has finally succumbed to exhaustion. He has only a moment's warning as the scuffling moves closer to him and he hears Ichigo's breathing before a round, hairy weight drops onto his stomach.  
There are a few seconds before he can breathe again, and he is glad it is dark so the shinigami cannot see his face. Finally he asks, sardonically; "Better?"  
Kurosaki grunts and shifts his head slightly. "Not really. You're all bones - what the heck do you eat?"  
He snorts in response. "As long as you quit making a racket and let me get some sleep."  
"Please. Don't think I don't hear you when you're up half the night pacing."  
"Shut up, Kurosaki."

It is more comfortable than he would have thought. Listening to Ichigo's sarcastic voice helps unstick the lump in his chest, and lower the flush from his cheeks. He lets himself relax again, careful to tuck his hands behind his head so that he doesn't reach out by accident, and listens to Ichigo's steady breathing. He smiles.

The warmth is comfortable, and it is nice, and he would be quite happy to stay here with this fuzzy lump on his stomach. He can hear the lump breathing and slowly realizes, just as he characterizes the other thing on his shoulder as a hand, that the lump is a person. When he hears a snore he has heard many times before, he realizes the lump is Ichigo, and relaxes. Just Ichigo. That's good.  
Shit.  
He yanks his arms back from where they had wandered around Kurosaki, trying to steady his breathing so he doesn't wake him. Thank god he was asleep. He looks down at the shinigami's relaxed face. Ichigo had twisted slightly in his sleep to face him, his hands had migrated, one resting under his orange hair and the other on Ishida's shoulder. Ishida doesn't let himself smile, but there is a lump in his throat.  
Calm down, you idiot. He tells himself firmly. He was just trying to get comfortable. You're just a big pillow to him. A scrawny, bony pillow. He thinks, with a half smirk.  
He sees Ichigo twitch, and closes his eyes, trying to relax his face. He can feel the weight lift off his chest abruptly, the frantic tensing and removal of the fingers on his shoulder, and tries not to let it bother him. He waits a minute before he opens his own eyes, and acts like he doesn't notice the red in Ichigo's cheeks.


	5. Limits

**AN: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed! I'm so glad to see people enjoying this. As always, your thoughts are appreciated. Let me know if there's anything I can do to improve characterization/writing style/pacing/etc. Enjoy!**

Red bleeds through the darkness behind his eyelids. He hears voices.  
"Kurosaki-kun!" The image of a wide eyed redhead flashes through his head, he struggles for a name. _Princess..._  
"No." A deeper voice, no image, only the involuntary twitch of his fingers. "You are not permitted to heal him."  
"'t's alright, 'hime," Spiky orange hair _Ichigo Ichigo Ichigo. _"Fix Uryu."  
He opens his eyes to gold, and a name occurs to him. "Inoue-san?" The ceiling above him is grey and pockmarked, and something tells him that is wrong.  
There are tears on her face. "I'm sorry Ishida-kun, I'm sorry."  
"Inoue-san," He looks around. Oh. Why are they still _here_? "What's wrong?"  
"They... they..." Her hands, he realizes with faint surprise, are curled into fists and shaking.  
A hoarse voice from across the room. "They want us to fight again," Ichigo.  
His mind, as though compensating for his earlier sluggishness, races. The more damage, the greater chance of last resorts - the last time the thing _not Ichigo, those eyes can't be Ichigo _took control was when Ichigo had a hole blasted through his chest. Fight them over and over, let Ichigo take more and more damage until...  
No. He wouldn't let it happen. Not again _sword eyes blood gone gone gone._  
He rises to his feet as Orihime's golden shield shatters, looking up to see Ichigo smiling, looking at the redheaded girl. He turns around and pushes his glasses up his nose. "Don't worry, Inoue-san. Kurosaki is too much of a bonehead to get hurt." She smiles but it is just as forced as Ichigo's, and they are so much alike it hurts.  
He draws his bow, because he remembers her face at the top of the dome, and he won't let Kurosaki make her cry again.

He wakes up more quickly the second time.  
He barely catches a glimpse of Orihime's face before the arrancar pulls her back. A cacophony of yells and the clash of blades disorients him, he pulls his head up from the ground and sees Ichigo blast aside a jackal-like arrancar. As the shinigami turns around, he sees another swath of orange hair as Orihime is thrust downwards towards the fallen arrancar.  
They aren't even going to let him rest.  
That's alright, he insists to himself, I'll just have to attack such that he can't fight, but not such that _not Ichigo _that thing comes out. They'll have to heal him then.  
He stands up and summons his bow, analyzing the fight. He can picture a path, and takes off.  
Standing on the air, he has a line of sight on Ichigo's knees, the shinigami distracted by a bullheaded arrancar.  
There is a blast and he turns away for a second and then the arrancar is nowhere to be seen and Ichigo is momentarily motionless. Then the shinigami shifts his weight, preparing for the next attack, and he can see the corner of brown eyes.  
The black blade freezes for a moment, and he draws the arrow.  
Brown eyes widen, and he is engulfed in black. He sees a dead hand relax from Orihime's throat as he falls.  
_No..._

There is still blood seeping from the wound when the golden shield shatters, and he can see Orihime's hands shaking.  
He stands up and smiles at her, because if Kurosaki is still standing, there is not a chance that he won't.

The next time is worse. Orihime's face looks as though it has no blood in it, hair dark and matted with sweat, whole body trembling. Her eyes are unfocused, she doesn't fix on his face as he looks at her, concerned. He pushes himself to his feet anyway, staggering when he finds he can't put weight on his left leg. Fine. That was what ransotengai was for anyway. At this rate, the length of these fights would be determined more by Orihime's strength than Ichigo's. It was going to be fine.  
Then he looks around properly. Ichigo is frozen, the closest arrancar, bear-headed, staggering upright. The shinigami has pulled his mask out, but he is struggling with it, shoulders hunched in pain. _No..._  
Gathering himself, he speeds over to Ichigo, cutting off the bear-headed arrancar, and materializes his bow. Ichigo straightens, still unfocused, and he sends two arrows precisely through his knees.  
Ichigo collapses to the floor in a cloud of dust, dropping the black blade, and Uryu spares a glance back to the arrancar with Orihime. He is still looking on impassively, and makes no move to direct the healer. Before the bear headed arrancar can attack, Uryu kicks Ichigo's blade away, and takes aim at Ichigo's right hand.  
The shinigami smiles, closing his eyes.  
The quincy shoots first the right, then the left hand.  
The wounds are clean, cauterized neatly, but he still sees Ichigo wince, and feels bile rise in his throat for each dark hole.  
For a moment, Orihime's watcher doesn't move. Then, as the bear-headed arrancar raises his sword, bemused at his good fortune, the two vanish. A raised hand, behind Ishida now, stills the blade, and he can hear Orihime's breathing.  
"Heal him." The arrancar commands.  
Orihime raises her shaking hands and closes her eyes. "I...I can't." Her voice stutters but her cheeks are dry and her gaze level. "I need...to rest."  
He only has a moment to marvel at her quick thinking _-well, _you_ weren't the one who figured out to swap uniforms - _before the arrancar yanks her hair, pulling her back to face him. "Do not lie to me, _girl." _And suddenly there is a blade and blood spilling onto his shirt and he can hear two voices yell "No!" at the same time and the dead hand withdraws its blade and releases Orihime and he sees gold.  
Her cheeks are not dry anymore, but it is not open hands that tremble but white knuckled fists. He can see her close her eyes, her whole face contorted, in concentration or anger or both he can't tell. Her shoulders shake, and he can see himself dying here _so much blood._  
"Uryu! Uryu, hang on you bastard!"  
He smiles.

The blood is gone.  
He can hear a thud, and opens his eyes to orange hair, half closed eyes, and ragged breathing. "In-oue?"  
A voice from above. "So you can heal, girl." A boot slams into her side, but she hardly makes a sound.  
"Don't touch her!" They shout in unison, but the arrancar looks at them both dismissively.  
"Were it not for Aizen-sama's orders, neither of you would be living. Now," He drags Orihime to her feet. "Heal him. Or would you prefer I decapitate the Quincy next?"  
"You..." Ichigo growls, but Orihime staggers towards him, and he doesn't finish the sentence.  
Even from here, Uryu can see Orihime's unfocused eyes and slumped shoulders. "Kurosaki-kun," she mumbles, and raises her hands.  
The golden shield inches into existence, eyelids sink over her red-tinged eyes and blood trickles down her chin from where she is biting her lip. When his hands are healed she drags herself around, knees in the dirt, to heal his legs.  
Uryu won't cry. It is not a question of pride, but the fact that his tears are the last things she needs now. So he holds them back, even though it makes him sick to do it.

Her shield crumbles as she falls, melting to the floor with a breath.  
"Orihime? Orihime!"  
Uryu doesn't yell, because if he does he will never be able to stop.  
He has to end it now.

Ichigo spins, and arrancar fly.  
They smash into the walls, and he is a tornado, hurling through them as though they are nothing but leaves. His eyes are the abyss - it would terrify Uryu if he didn't know precisely where the depths came from.  
He glances at Orihime. Her breathing is shallow, irregular, her body shaking as if with fever.  
He summons his bow.  
He has hardly a moment to think of angles of attack, of points where he can wound Ichigo such that the fight will stop, because one of the arrancar has dared to withstand Hurricane Ichigo. There is a laugh, a hysterical, hopeless laugh _wrong wrong wrong _and a yell that sounds like sobbing "_Getsuga Tenshou!_"  
And then Ishida goes blind - the world is black, or white, he can't tell.  
When he can begin to distinguish shades of grey, he can tell that Ichigo is burning.  
It is like staring at the sun, or a million rescue flares lit at once. Ichigo's spiritual energy is flailing, spasmodic, and it is beyond the first day in the park, he cannot find a metaphor, an understanding, he cannot explain. Even as he steps forward, thinking of absorbing energy, doing anything to save Ichigo from whatever is happening to him, it stops.  
The shinigami's body lies still, and he is running without thinking, without sparing a thought to the other arrancar around him. As he gets closer, falls to his knees, he can feel Ichigo's spirit ribbon _still there, still alive_ but it is curled back, curved in on itself, shying away like a beaten dog, and it is _wrong_.


	6. Fever Dreams and Alternate Universes

**AN: Hey! Thanks to everyone for the reviews on the last chapter – it's really wonderful to have such a thoughtful group of consistent reviewers. I always look forward to your comments whenever I post, they are the best motivation and inspiration. :)**

**There's some deliberate and lampshaded out of character-ness in this chapter, due to extenuating circumstances, but do let me know if it seems to go too far off base or if there's anything in particular that feels jarring. Constructive criticism always helps me improve!**

**Speaking of improvement, I've tried something new with the formatting this time, since it's been causing problems, so let me know if it improves readability for you guys.**

**And without further ado, I'll give you the long awaited resolution to last chapter's cliffhanger!**

The image of Ichigo and Orihime being carried out on stretchers is hazy; he can hardly remember his spiritual binders being put back on. When he is back in the cell, Ichigo splayed in the dirt in front of him, he finds that he can finally breathe, finally focus. He scoots over to the prone form of the shinigami, looking at him carefully. He is trembling all over, and when he reaches over to lay a hand against his forehead, he is shocked by the fierce heat radiating from Ichigo. One hand automatically goes back towards his belt, but he hesitates. He doesn't know what exactly is causing this apparent fever (Could there _be _bacteria in Hueco Mundo? Or viruses? They had seen hollowified lizards, but... maybe spiritual beings had their own diseases...), but clearly it's the result of something wrong with the shinigami's spiritual energy. It was possible that anything he could give him would make it worse - he doesn't know _how _any of Kurotsuchi's treatments work, anyway. (His fingers twitch, but he ignores it. He doesn't have time.)

He looks at Ichigo's face, sweat staining his orange hair, damping down the unruly spikes. Uryu runs his hand from the boy's forehead through the damp locks, letting his hand rest for a moment before abruptly pulling it away.

So something had gone wrong with Ichigo's spiritual energy, he steers his train of thought back. What was different about this case? It wasn't as though the shinigami had never pushed himself to his limit; he had fought far more powerful opponents than these arrancar. However, he notes, Ichigo wasn't used to long term melee fights. He fought one on one with an opponent, finished, rested or healed, and then moved on. He couldn't think of a time before now that Ichigo would have fought a group of opponents for so long - not even on that first day in the park. _And he wasn't alone that time _he thinks, and feels his stomach twist. Being on full blast, he redirects himself, - or even nearly-full blast - for so long, was bound to exhaust his spiritual energy. But that it would do so much...

He tries not to contemplate _it could have been worse_, instead examining Ichigo more closely. His eyes are half closed, brown eyes twitching beneath the lids. He leans over, worried, and then the brown eyes snap open, staring straight up at him. His throat tightens.

"Ru-kia?" Ichigo asks in a faint, raspy voice, quite unlike his own.

"No," He says, trying not to think about being mistaken for Kuchiki-san, "It's me, Uryu."

"Oh," Ichigo replies, " 'course. Glasses..." A wobbly hand reaches up to his face, waving as though to swat lightly at the offending article. Uryu catches the wavering appendage, lowering it back to the floor, and adjusts his glasses with his other hand to distract himself. Ichigo looks oddly hurt, sticking his lower lip out like a petulant child. " 're nice eyes. Not fair to hide 'em."

Uryu's eyes widen. Either he has misheard, or something has gone drastically wrong with the universe, because Ichigo Kurosaki did not call people's eyes 'nice' - especially not _his._ "R-really?" He replies, brain still numb from the abrupt shift in reality, trying not to stutter and failing.

"Yep." The shinigami replied with the bright confidence of someone much younger. "All blue. Like... blue things." He waves his other hand vaguely.

"Blue things." Uryu mutters faintly, biting back the sarcasm he would normally express, because Ichigo is clearly, _painfully_ not himself.

He hears footsteps in the hall, and hopes they are bringing water. He puts a hand on Ichigo's shoulder, preparing to stand up. "You should rest."

Ichigo's face shifts from childish certainty to unhappiness with a rapidity that should not, by all rights, be possible. "Don't leave."

His eyes are wide and he looks frightened. The expression is hopelessly out of place on his face, like a six year old boy staring out from the eyes of a soldier. Uryu considers for a moment that he has been thrown into some absurd alternate universe, like in one of those science fiction shows he occasionally indulges in.

"It'll be just a second, I'm just going to the door," He says, attempting to sound soothing. "You'll be able to see me the whole time."

Ichigo pouts, but doesn't speak. Uryu starts to stand up, but only then does he realize Ichigo hasn't let go of his hand. His face flushes, but he squeezes the hand before letting it go, hoping that this is, in fact, some freakish alternate universe so Ichigo won't remember this later.

He finally rises and goes to the door to meet the approaching arrancar, who sneers and shoves the tray with food and water into his hands. The arrancar leans over to fix his black-irised eyes on Ichigo. "Freak's right messed up, eh? His little girlfriend's out of her head too. Keeps muttering his name. _Kurosaki-kun, Kurosaki-kun._" He squeaks in a falsetto voice. "Bloody broken record."

He meets the arrancar's eyes briefly but doesn't say anything, and the white-helmeted figure just scoffs. Turning around, he walks back to Ichigo and sets the trays on the ground. Ripping off the most tattered edge of his cape, he soaks it in one of the cups of water and lays it across Ichigo's forehead.

"Mm, 's good." Ichigo mumbles, and Uryu lets himself smile just a little.

"Hungry?" He asks, looking at the food on the tray and wincing - he wouldn't want to feed this to a _healthy _person, much less Ichigo, but he needs _something._

"Nuh-uh. Thirsty." Uryu decides not to push food on him, hoping he will get his appetite back soon - he really doesn't want bile all over the cell, in any case. He puts his hand on Ichigo's head to help him up just enough so he could tilt the glass of water into his mouth. "T'anks." He says after he swallows, and his eyelids flutter to half mast.

Uryu sits back and watches him, trying not to think of the other redhead who was alone here. _'His little girlfriend's out of her head too.' _ It wasn't as though he could even be annoyed about the first part, it would be like being annoyed with someone for saying that the sky was blue (was the sky actually blue in Hueco Mundo?) or the sun was hot - the fact that Orihime loved Ichigo was equally apparent. (Except, admittedly, to Ichigo, but then again he always was exceptionally dense.) And it couldn't even _bother _him, because Orihime was so completely generous and selfless, so hopelessly without pretension or guile - everything Ichigo was.

_(Everything he wasn't.)_

And really, you couldn't _help _but want her to be happy. To do otherwise would be like trying to fight the tides.

He breaks himself out of this wandering train of thought when he hears Ichigo gasp. "What," The shinigami says, still raspy and weak but at least less childish. "The Hell are _those_?" He waved his arm at the empty space in front of the door. Eyes wide and glazed, he tries to push himself to his feet and fails, waving his hand in the air as though he expects a sword to appear in it. "Zangetsu? Zangetsu!"

Alright, hallucinations. Those generally happened with a fever, so he guessed that whatever was wrong with Ichigo was close enough to a fever to mimic this particular symptom.  
Ichigo was pushing himself back, trying to shift himself upright against the wall, one fist raised.

Monsters. He could deal with monsters. He always had.

Ichigo looks at him, wild eyed, "Uryu, I can't -" and Uryu squares his shoulders and rolls his eyes, adjusting his glasses.

"Honestly, Kurosaki, do I have to deal with _everything_?" He forces his mouth to twitch into a smirk, and is relieved to see that in spite of the glazed eyes and the sweat there is a faint answering grin on the shinigami's face as his fist relaxes.

Feeling slightly silly, he raises his arm as though summoning his bow, blocked from him by the dull grey bands around his wrists, and steps in front of Ichigo. He shifts his arms around, as though aiming at various targets around the room, hoping that this will resolve Ichigo's fear. After a few moments of 'fighting', he turns around to check Ichigo's reaction. The boy's eyes are half closed, and he seems to be shaking again from the strain of standing, but he smiles vaguely and says "Nice one, Ishida." before sliding down the wall.

Uryu rushes over to him, steadying his fall and straightening him out into a slouched sitting position. His brown eyes twitch beneath fluttering lids, and as Uryu raises a hand to check his temperature, he can see beads of sweat streaming down his forehead. He reaches to tear off another piece of cloth when he hears Ichigo mutter "'hime...".

He looks around, scrap of his cape half torn away, but Ichigo's eyes are closed, his face twitching. "'hime... no... no..." The boy's fingers clench, and Uryu realizes that he must have grabbed his hand as Ichigo's fingernails dig into his palm. Flushing, he rips the rest of the fabric away. He reaches over and strokes Ichigo's forehead with it, dabbing at the sweat above his eyes. Trying to sound soothing instead of panicked, he murmurs softly "It's okay, it's okay, she's fine." hoping desperately that it's true.

Ichigo's face relaxes slightly at his touch, and his nails stop digging furrows in his hand.  
They sit like that for what feels like ages, as light fades from the cell. Ichigo murmurs and twitches fitfully, calling after Rukia, Yuzu and Karin, Chad and Renji, Tatsuki, even, in a child's quiet, lilting voice, for his mother. Uryu wipes his forehead each time, and mutters words of comfort that feel hollow and hopeless on his lips.

The quietest words, last of all, are his name, barely a breath, "Uryu, please..."

He starts at the sound, before squeezing the clenched fingers and letting a hand drift over his closed eyes. "It's okay," He feels his face flush in the darkness. "I'm here."

Ichigo's eyes snap open, staring blankly up at the ceiling, and he feels the clench of panic in his stomach.

But then they fix on his eyes, clear, and his voice sounds more himself than it has all evening, "'m glad you're here, Uryu."

And in spite of himself, in spite of any rational thought, there in the darkness he takes the words, wraps them up in the feeling of Ichigo's fingers around his, and tucks them in a warm, safe place.


	7. Boil

**AN: Thanks again to all my readers and to my reviewers!**

**This was a tricky chapter to write, as it involves a character I haven't written before. I spent some time rewatching Bleach clips to get a feel for it, and I think it came out okay. However, I would really appreciate any constructive criticism or comments on the use of the character. **

**I tried the same formatting as before, but the method I used to separate sections didn't translate over to . I know some authors have horizontal lines to separate sections, so if anyone knows how to set that up in word that would be awesome. **

**Enjoy!**

He doesn't sleep that night, only occasionally drifting into a doze, jerking awake each time to press his fingers across Ichigo's forehead and listen to his breathing. He is exhausted in the morning, but he hardly notices, watching Ichigo's slightly shaking hands as he lifts spoonfuls of cold gruel from the evening before to his lips. They don't speak.  
The sound of footsteps forces him to turn his eyes away from Ichigo, towards the door. His stomach clenches. _No... not now..._  
He stands up before the arrancar - a different one this time - even comes into view, striding to block the door. He speaks softly but firmly, not wanting Ichigo to hear.  
"Not today."  
"Move, Quincy."  
"He's still ill, he was half dead..."  
"Irrelevant. Move."  
"Aizen wants a soldier, not a corpse!" He says it louder than he meant to, and winces, so the arm that grabs his coat and slams his face into the bars is unexpected. The yell of "Uryu!" is lost amid the ringing in his ears, and when he opens his eyes he is staring into a glowing ember. He blinks, and it resolves into an Arrancar's eye.  
"Speak disrespectfully of Aizen-sama again," a grim murmur in his ear, "and it is you who will end up as a corpse." The hand clenches and swings him into the wall. The door opens as he slides to the floor. He can see Ichigo's trembling legs rushing towards him. "D-dammit, Uryu -" But the white arm closes around the sleeve of his shihakusho, dragging him away even as he stumbles, and the door clangs behind them, leaving him alone with the darkness.

He is left alone only long enough for the throbbing pain in his head to fade into a dull ache and for confused images of abyssal eyes and black blades and Ichigo's limp body to claw their way back behind his retinas. Then they come.  
He doesn't speak, even as they laugh at the blood running down his face, and jeer at his defiance. They do not concern him. They are hardly even real.

Ichigo is already fighting when he arrives. He is up against the wall, braced to support his quavery knees. The waves of black energy keep the three surrounding arrancar at a distance, but only just, and each time the blast is a little shorter, a little fainter.  
Looking at his sweating face and shaking hands, Uryu cannot imagine joining the assault, but then Ichigo looks up and grins at him, "Oy, Uryu, come to join the fun?" and he remembers the princess, Ichigo's happy ending, and, selfishly, the fact that Ichigo would never forgive him if he let her get hurt.  
And so he buries the beads of sweat on Ichigo's forehead and the way he leans his shoulders on the wall and all of the guilt and the anger and the loathing down in his own bottomless abyss, and reshapes his face into cocky Ishida Uryu, and smirks. "Anytime, Kurosaki."  
He summons his bow.

He doesn't see the moment when it goes wrong, but he hears it.  
Uryu is halfway across the room, knocked back by a blast, just about to regroup, when he hears the laugh.  
It is not the sobbing laugh, the broken laugh. It is mad and terrifying and somehow he knows that it is _not Ichigo_.  
Until he hears the echo of his voice he doesn't realize that he has shouted Ichigo's name. His legs are frozen, torn between a primal impulse to flee, to run and hide and hope to go unnoticed by this new predator, and the need to go to Ichigo, to fix this, to make sure. He stands, watching, as arrancar fall in clouds of dust, and calls Ichigo's name again, hoping somehow that his voice will jar him, bring him back to himself. _(Stupid hope, selfish hope, but he cannot bring himself to care.)_  
Then he sees him.  
No, not him. It. This is not Ichigo. _(__Not _his _Ichigo,_ _his mind prefaces and just as rapidly edits away.) _Nor is it the horned _creature_ from the dome - strictly speaking, _it _isn't different from Ichigo wearing his hollow mask, save from the shift in movement, in the eyes, that flips some switch in the deep recesses of his brain, sends terror racing down his spine like every small trembling thing under a hunter's eye.  
It hunches over one of the fallen arrancar as the clouds settle, fingers dug into the warrior's flesh so that blood runs down the limp arm. Manic glee boils up behind the scorching eyes when it sees Uryu, and it lets loose another shrieking laugh, echoing through the now silent dome into a horrifying cacophony. As the noise reverberates, it bends its head over the arrancar and traces its tongue over the gouge marks in the pale dead arm beneath it , staining the bone mask with blood. As the silence in the room reestablishes itself, the thief of Ichigo strikes at it again.  
"Heell-oooo!" The voice is jarring, singsong but strangely off key. It is so not-Ichigo that it manages to unstick Uryu's throat.  
"Kurosaki!" He yells it over the creature's head, not able to look into its eyes. "You idiot - get a hold of yourself!"  
"Kurosaki, Kurosaki, Kurosaki!" It jeers back at him. "Booo-ring." It vanishes, and before he knows it is on top of him. It is only the web of his bow that protects him from the blade. He forces himself to look up into the black pits, trying to imagine that can see a pool of brown lurking behind the yellow glow. "Kurosaki, _wake up_! You can't slack off now, moron!" It only laughs and twists the blade through the gaps in the bow, and he can feel his arms strain and crack, then it tosses him against the wall. He struggles to focus enough to draw the ransotengai to his arms, the gold fires seared against his vision, but he manages to send off a stream of arrows. _Just hold it off, keep it away, (Don't make me see it again, please.)_  
It darts and hops among the arrows, a child on a hopscotch board, and caws at him. "You're _anno-ying_!" He sends a wave of darkness that Uryu barely dodges, leaping for the higher ground, anything to give him distance.  
"You've always been _annoying._" It continues, sauntering across the air, and though Uryu has spent countless sleepless nights trying to figure out how to best fight hollow hybrids, his mind is a clanging bell, echoing with the words. "So _controlled _and _calm, _with your neat little _arrows, _nice and _clean_ and_ distant. _Always above it all, _Ishida Uryu, _with your pretty little _pride _and _chivalry_."  
The creature swats away Licht Regen as though it was a butterfly. "You think yourself a knight in shining armor? You aren't fit even to be a horse!" It follows him, faithful as a bloodhound, as he dodges mindlessly through the air. Ichigo's hand seizes his chin, digging in ragged nails to rip out blood. "Look at me." the voice commands, and Uryu lets himself fall through the air to get away. The laugh rings against the ceiling as he catches himself on the ground, his leg buckling with yesterday's wounds. "A hollow and a shinigami - all of your enemies in one!" Uryu stares up at it, Ichigo's name choked in his throat. "You should be _enjoying_ this - _relishing _it! You should be _burning _to tear me apart." It sweeps downward, but Uryu's cross is hardly anything more than a useless charm, it is toying with him, little bird who forgot how to fly. "But you're too busy _thinking. _Little mind tearing itself apart, questions with no answers. You," It has landed, and it stalks towards him. "just," Step "don't," Step "_get it." _  
He looks up, mumbling "Ichigo..."  
It slams him against the wall.  
_horns black eyes this can't be Ichigo this has to be Ichigo blood black blade pain pain pain_  
"Stop _calling _him! He was _weak! _This is _his _fault!" The fist grinds into him, ribs are cracking. "What about you?" It sneers, the bloodstained bone in a perpetual grin. "Does the _last Quincy _have any killer instinct?"  
He gasps for breath, fighting away the memories that paralyze him, his arm pinned uselessly against the wall by the creatures other hand. It shrugs. "Guess not," and draws back the arm that had been pinning his body, shifting the hand for an attack, fingers flexing as though he longs to shove into Uryu's chest and rip out his heart.  
_No. That's not _yours_. _  
The nonsensical thought wakes him up, and he focuses, twisting to shift the ransotengai from his right arm to the hand grasping it. With a jerk, he yanks Ichigo's hand away, throwing the creature off balance.

It huffs angrily, wrenching it's arm to snap the threads of the ransotengai as he darts away, but when it look up at him it croons. "Good!" It twirls Ichigo's blade around a finger. "This might be fun after all."  
And then Uryu is behind it and launches a barrage of arrows at the center of its back and it swats them away, but that doesn't matter, what matters is that his brain has caught up with reality, he has remembered how to fly. This lets him keep his voice level as he shouts Ichigo's name, lets him berate himself with 'you should have been prepared for this', lets him inventory the supplies that had been returned to his belt when he entered the arena as dispassionately as if they were sitting in a warehouse.  
So when the creature leaps from the air above him, Ichigo's sword glances off a shield of compressed reishi, and Uryu lets a muscle in his cheek shift upward. _Point one to the Quincy._  
In theory, he could have expanded the shield into a cocoon and remained inside, powering the shield with the energy expended attacking it (which wouldn't be that hard, both Kurosaki and the creature let their spiritual energy spill out ridiculously), until either his own spiritual reserves proved insufficient to hold the energy together, or an attack contained more energy than he was able to convert at one time. (He had spent time planning this, thinking about how many people could fit under the shield, how much energy he would be able to handle, if he could shift it such that it contained someone other than himself, whirring and calculating ever since the dome.)  
But that, he imagined, would be rather against the spirit of the competition, and he had a feeling he wouldn't be the one paying for it.  
So he raises the shield and shoves back the creature, tossing it to the ground, where it blurs away. He starts to consider if he has enough fine control to make an arrow slit in the shield, but then he hears "Getsuga Tenshou!" roared in an echoing voice from behind, and decides it would really be more effective to have the shield cover his back.

He is sent flying away from the impact, skidding to a halt in mid air. He yells "Ichigo!" again as he turns around, only to find the creature hurtling towards him. He locks the blade with his bow, and the creature's dark eyes lock with his.  
"Why won't you_ get it?_" It snarls as he twists his bow and hurls the blade away, dodging the wave of black energy. "You think he'll wake up because _you_ ask?" The cackling chases Uryu as he swerves through the air. "I thought you were supposed to be the _smart _one. You've said it yourself," It throws back its head, the scream gleeful. "You're _enemies_!"  
He barely raises his bow in time to block the sword thrust, aiming an arrow at its neck, but it jerks the blade to the side, sending the arrow spinning into the dirt. He yells Ichigo's name into its face without conviction and it howls with laughter. "Who do you think I am? _I'm part of _him" It jeers in his face. "I'm just more _honest._"  
Uryu feels blood drain away from his face as he shouts "_Licht Regen!_" The creature scoffs, knocking away the blasts, but it gives him distance.  
One of Ichigo's hands brushes a burn from one of the arrows that had gotten through to him, staining the fingers with blood. The creature stalks towards him as it drags the fingers down the bone mask, and the hairs on the back of Uryu's neck quaver to attention. "Your trouble is you're too busy _thinking _and _caring_ to get that you're just _useful_." It giggles at the look on his face. "You think _he_ cares?"  
He takes the safe place in his chest and wraps it in iron before he responds levelly. "Ichigo. Get up."  
It snorts at the serious expression on his face. "You threatened his _home,_"  
"Ichigo."  
"His _family_,"  
"Ichigo"  
"Even _I_ know,"  
"Ichigo."  
"He won'tforgive _you_."  
"Ichigo."  
"Ichigo, Ichigo, Ichigo!" It snarls. "Like a broken record. Seems to me your reputation for intellect is a mite undeserved." It taps its head.  
"Ichigo."  
"You think he didn't _enjoy _it when I stabbed you? You think he hadn't been waiting for a chance -"  
"SHUT UP!"  
The iron is sinking in a boiling sea, and his blood seems to flood his retinas. When it clears, there is nothing in front of him.  
Then, through the pounding in his ears comes the call. "Getsuga Tenshou!"  
He only has a fraction of a second after he hears the shield shatter before he can't feel his legs. What he can feel is pain, paralyzing his mind and freezing his thoughts.  
When words come, it is an endless loop of "-"  
Then he hits the ground, and words disappear again.  
The laughter is the first thing he can process, and something tells him it's bad.  
_Snap out of it, idiot. _Says a voice that sounds a lot like Ichigo. _You had half your internal organs crushed and not freaked out. Don't wuss out over this. _  
His mouth twitches into a smirk, his ragged breathing hitching for a moment into something that could have been a laugh, and he forces spiritual threads together through his agony to lift himself off the ground.  
_Oh. That's a problem._  
His spine is severed, his lower half dangling by exposed muscle, where it can be seen through pools of blood.  
_That would explain why I can't feel my legs. _  
He attaches spiritual threads to his joints, wrapping them around his wound to hold his body together.  
"Oh good," He hadn't seen the creature land. "I get to play with you a bit longer."  
And it rushes towards him and he can't summon his bow without letting his body fall to pieces and it hurts so much –  
_SLAM_  
He hits the wall, Ichigo's hand at his throat. The creature tilts its head. "Hmm, maybe not." It giggles. "Guess I'll just have to make this last a while then." and it _squeezes_.  
The part of Uryu's brain that isn't screaming in pain or being starved of oxygen thinks: _Oh. This is how it ends._  
"Ready to die, Quincy?"  
_No. This isn't how it's supposed to be. _  
"You... know," He gasps faintly.  
"Hmm?" Jeers the bloodstained mouth, relaxing its grip slightly.  
Now that he can get some oxygen to his brain, he can begin to concentrate, focusing his energy on moving his arm. "I really don't _care_," His fingers lock around the hilt of Selle Schneider. "If he never forgives me."  
He smirks as he charges the blade forward, looking up to meet the creatures eyes -  
- which have returned to brown.  
"Ichigo -" He murmurs, as the fingers relax from his throat, and then he sees the brown eyes flicker down and Selle Schneider is buried in Ichigo's gut and he barely hears the question "Uryu-?" before pain rushes up his arm and it is burning and it is being torn apart.  
They both fall to the ground.  
The dead take them away.


	8. Shattered

**AN: My sincere apologies for the very short chapter, this was just the best way to break it up. The next one is longer, I promise.**

**Thanks to all the readers and reviewers! You guys are amazing. **

The words echo in his head in the silence of the cell.

_You think he cares?_

_You think he didn't enjoy - You think he hadn't been waiting -?_

And every time he tries to push them down, the image of Ichigo's brown eyes and Seele Schneider stabbed through him bubbles back up to the surface, and every thought of _It was self defense, I didn't know - _feels painful and inadequate against all of the guilt and the anger –

"Quit looking at me like that!"

Ichigo's belligerent tone unleashes the anger, and he buries himself in cold. "How should I look at you?"

He almost stutters, desperation and confusion and fury all painted on his face. "You stabbed me!"

"I'm sorry for infringing on _your_ usual job." And he shoves down the voice that's screaming _No, that wasn't him, you don't blame him, it wasn't his fault –_

"That wasn't me." And the pain and the guilt on his face let Uryu burn with vindictive fury and quash the guilty voice in his head.

"Then who was it?" He snaps back, all control, and he has so easily taken the offensive that he wants to laugh. "You certainly didn't seem to be too worried about it - you were only concerned about making it a fair fight. You weren't even worried about what you'd done."

And he shoves down the shock that had been on Ichigo's face when he had seen Zangetsu run through him and focuses on the horror he had felt as Ichigo had offered to let Ulquiorra cut off his limbs, twists it into a blade.

"I wasn't - you - Orihime was there!" Ichigo splutters, clutching at the air, guilt and anger - _Orihime Orihime Orihime –_

_No, it's not about her, I don't _want _it to be about her, I - _"Yes, and you weren't too concerned about her either. You were there to save her, and there you were, offering to -" He is Ishida Uryu, eternally chivalrous, it's about saving _her, _not about his fear and his pain and his _fury_ –

He's gone too far, he can see it in the snarl that twists Ichigo's face, reminiscent of the _thing_ he was before, and part of him is glad of it, drinks it up, because it makes it so much _easier -_ "What about you? I asked you to protect her, and you had to come up to the dome. You could have gotten away - she could have been _safe_. But you were all eager to fight an Espada." Ichigo is sneering, it looks horribly wrong on his face." That's all you've ever cared about, isn't it? Proving yourself? Since Soul Society. Since the beginning. 'The strength of the Qui-'"

"You're right!" It bursts out of him, echoing through the cell, because how can he argue with what has brought him so much regret - _I hate _you _- can you ever forgive me -_ _I'm sorry - _but he keeps talking in spite of it, and there is so much bitterness in his voice he hardly recognizes it. "You're right, I should have left. Taken Inoue-san somewhere safe, and left you there to die. You would have liked that - your _family _and _friends _would have too." He snarls, and the answering wince only adds fuel to the fire eating him. "I should have left, saved _her_, because _she's _the only one you care about, isn't she?" _No, that's not what I believe, I'm not angry - I don't hate - I don't -_ "She's the one you wanted so badly to protect, and I'm the one you wanted to kill. Do you really hate me that much, Kurosaki?" And a part of him, a small part, curled up in the corner watching the fire rage, wants him to answer, wants Ichigo to say that he doesn't hate him, he could never hate him, he –

"Maybe I do!" The bellow makes Uryu step back in spite of himself. "I _should_. You don't really care about us, do you? All you care about is your _Quincy pride. _You would have left us - all of us - just to get your stupid powers back."

He ignores the pain that sweeps Ichigo's face, the guilt and the agony and the hopelessness of his decision fuel his desperate self justification, "You would have done the same! Don't act like you're not proud - that you don't want to protect - to _fi -_"

"I wouldn't have abandoned anyone - except maybe _you." _And Ichigo's eyes hold only the abyss he found on the dome, and he is shattered.

Ichigo's next words echo against falling fragments devoured in flames, hardly heard. "Why do you even bother to act like you're our friend? Why are you even _here_?"

_I'm here for _you - And he can't say it, he's promised himself he won't say it, because Ichigo doesn't deserve that burden, and his pain and his _guilt_ and the fact that Ichigo can never, ever know what he's sacrificing, what he's _suffering - _char through his restraints, fuel a desperate drive to make Ichigo understand his _pain - _to make him _hurt –_

_No - this isn't what I wanted - I don't -_


	9. Broken

**AN: We're back! Thanks to all of my readers, and especially to my reviewers, who are ridiculously awesome. Seriously, amazing.**

**Hope you all enjoy this chapter. (It's much longer than the last one! Yay!)**

**Edit: Just clarifying the fight a bit. **

He remembers.  
He remembers pulling on his mask, the arena fading away, replaced by the tilted buildings of his inner world, the pale face of his hollow rushing towards him - "Bad move, _King_" - everything going black and hearing laughter -  
- and waking up to his name echoing around his buildings, dizzy and disoriented.  
Two voices, voices he knows -  
"Ichigo"  
"Even _I_ know,"  
"Ichigo."  
"He won'tforgive _you_."  
"Ichigo."  
And he screams, drowning out the hollow's next words - _Of course I've forgiven him - he's my _friend - and the pain and the desperation bleeding through Uryu's level voice is tearing through him. He wants Uryu to defend himself, to say something cold and sarcastic, to call him an idiot, to quote some ridiculous fact about hollow reiatsu, anything other than this _pain -_  
"You think he didn't _enjoy _it when I stabbed you?" And his yells of defiance - _I never wanted to hurt him - I never - I couldn't want that - I couldn't - _echo aimlessly through the pouring rain, they sound hollow around his ears. " You think he hadn't been waiting for a chance -"  
"SHUT UP!" It is like a punch to the gut, watching Uryu's face twist in fury at him - _no, not at me, that thing's not _me_ - _  
And then it is like watching a film, hearing the hollows voice howl "Getsuga Tenshou!" as it raises Zangetsu, watching as the shield around Uryu shatters, as the white body falls in pieces, blood splattering the ground, as laughter echoes in his ears.  
And then Uryu rises from the ground, and his amazement is swallowed by his fury, and his voice comes out, and he screams into the silence of the city. "Come out, you bastard! Come out and let me fight you!"  
A violent jolt jars him out, and he sees terrified blue eyes staring at him. His perspective tilts as he hears the voice. "Hmm, maybe not." A spasm of giggling from his own throat makes him shiver. "Guess I'll just have to make this last a while then." and he can see Uryu gasp, see his eyes widen in pain -  
"Ready to die, Quincy?"  
_-_ and _oh god he's really going to die - I'm going to kill him _fuels him, and he desperately tries to reach out, to take back control of his own hands, and he can hear laughter reverberating around the city walls. It almost drowns out Uryu's next words "You... know," and he can feel his fingers relax, and he struggles harder, because if he can feel it he can control it. Uryu's voice falls like snow over his inner city as Ichigo makes the final push to shatter his mask. "I really don't _care_ if he never forgives me."  
And the first thing he feels as he takes back control is the tearing pain as the blue arrow slides into his abdomen, and he sees Uryu's smirk shatter as their eyes meet.  
"Ichigo -" And he hears a thousand apologies in his own name, but he still feels _I really don't care_ burrowing down and chilling the marrow in his bones.  
He needs to tell him, he needs him to know that he didn't mean any of it, and he starts to say his name -  
- and he sees a wince grab Uryu's face and twist and twist and he can feel the blue arrow eating, tearing him apart from the inside and he still needs to _tell him_ -

He wants to wait.  
If he waits until it's dark, and says "I didn't mean it." in the silence, everything will be alright. Uryu can say, "I know," and there's a good chance he won't even have to call Ichigo an idiot, if it's dark enough and he's quiet enough, and all of the horrible guilt that's pooling inside him will _go away._  
That's what he wants.  
But it's not getting dark _fast _enough, and he can still feel the echoes of the blade eating him away from the inside, and the ice of _I really don't care _is melting, seeping out of his bones and twisting around his head. He sees Uryu's blue eyes flicker to them, weighted with guilt, and he's not _allowed_ to feel _guilty, _not -  
- he snaps. "Quit looking at me like that!"  
"How should I look at you?" The voice is level, no pain bleeding through, and that gives him permission to continue.  
"You stabbed me!" It's not an answer, but he doesn't care, he doesn't want to think -  
"I'm sorry for infringing on _your_ usual job." It is a hammer blow of condemnation, a betrayal of something he thought had been silently agreed that they wouldn't talk about, wouldn't question, would try to forget, and it _hurts_ -  
"That wasn't me." He retorts furiously, uselessly, because Ishida knows that, they both know it , but saying it now won't make Uryu _believe _it, any more than he can make himself believe it, really.  
"Then who was it?" And his face falls, because Uryu is only echoing his own thoughts, thoughts he hasn't answered. "You certainly didn't seem to be too worried about it - you were only concerned about making it a fair fight. You weren't even worried about what you'd done."  
_No - I was - I - _But he can't (_won't) _put the horror that he felt at the sight of the black blade on the dome into words, so he splutters an excuse "I wasn't - you - Orihime was there!" _(Useless, pathetic, not an answer)_  
Ishida's face twists, "Yes, and you weren't too concerned about her either. You were there to save her, and there you were, offering to -"  
The venom in Ishida's voice corrodes through him, sending bitterness bubbling to the surface, and he spills out -"What about you? I asked you to protect her, and you had to come up to the dome. You could have gotten away - she could have been _safe_. But you were all eager to fight an Espada." _What am I saying? What -_ "That's all you've ever cared about, isn't it? Proving yourself? Since Soul Society. Since the beginning. 'The strength of the Qui-'"  
"You're right!" Ishida bellows, fury echoing through the cell, snapping the last restraints of their argument "You're right, I should have left. Taken Inoue-san somewhere safe, and left you there to die. You would have liked that - your _family _and _friends _would have too." He feels himself wince slightly, but Uryu doesn't stop "I should have left, saved _her_, because _she's _the only one you care about, isn't she? She's the one you wanted so badly to protect, and I'm the one you wanted to kill. Do you really hate me that much, Kurosaki?"  
And _I really don't care _coils up and strangles _no, Uryu, I don't - I couldn't _"Maybe I do!" He yells, and sees Uryu step back, his face flickering into pain for a fraction of a second, and he _doesn't care._ "I should. You don't really care about us, do you? All you care about is your _Quincy pride. _You would have left us" (_me)_ "- all of us - just to get your stupid powers back."  
"You would have done the same! Don't act like you're not proud - that you don't want to protect - to _fi -_" And he can hear the words of his inner hollow - _seek battle _- and it makes him sick, and he cuts across Ishida before he can finish, before he can hear anymore.  
"I wouldn't have _abandoned_ anyone - except maybe _you._ Why do you even bother to act like you're our friend? Why are you even _here_?" He shoves down thoughts of what he wants Uryu to answer, lets it all be consumed in his _rage_.  
He watches Ishida's face contort into something hardly human, and then a fist comes hurtling towards his face. The sheer unexpectedness, the unbelievability, slows his reaction time, and he feels the knuckles crash into his chin, and everything is boiled by fury and hatred and he just needs to fight - to hurt -  
- and there is no control no strategy no thought pounding over and over and over hardly feeling Ishida's fingers smash his face knee in his stomach the glass slicing his knuckles all the blood and he just wants to make him _hurt - _  
- and it's not enough and he _slams _his fist into him and he just needs to break him so he won't hear –  
There is a crack as Uryu's head hits the wall, and a gasp, and he goes cold before his mind can even catch up with what has happened, before the boiling fury has fully drained away, and then suddenly it feels like his mind is going too fast, too much - the way Uryu is sliding down the wall, how his limbs are collapsing, the blood pooling around his mouth, his eyes slipping shut, _ohgod that's not supposed to be that way -_  
- and Uryu's eyes are closed he's not breathing so much blood _no no no can't die can't don't leave - _and he doesn't know what he's saying what he's doing -  
- and then he's kneeling beside Uryu and there's blood on his lips that isn't his and his brain seems to freeze for a second _What - ?_  
- and then time returns to normal, and Uryu is lying on the floor and he might be dead and he might have kissed him, and he realizes that he's alone and he doesn't know what to do -  
There's the faintest moan from Uryu's prone body, and his eyelids flutter.  
"Uryu? Uryu, stay -"  
He can see Uryu's blue eyes meet his, and they are focused, in spite of the absence of glasses _(I broke them - I broke _him -) and he turns away to avoid the churning nausea.  
_Orihime. She can fix him. _He turns to the door of the cell, hoping that there is someone who can hear him - _there has to be someone - he can't - he can't - _He won't let himself think about it, won't let himself contemplate the possibility that there might not be anyone, that they might not listen, might not care, might not - "Hey!" He shakes the bars, slams his bruised fists into the wall. "Hey! We need help!" His voice echoes _someone has to hear - someone _"Hey! He's hurt!"  
There are footsteps.  
"What the hell's he yellin' about?"  
"Quiet."  
The two arrancar appear in the corridor, barely distinguishable in the darkness.  
"Hah!" The larger of the two arrancar snorts. "The prat's dead. Who did it? You, must've been-"  
"He's alive!" Ichigo almost shouts, and the arrancar smirks at him. "He needs help - he needs to see Orihime _now._"  
A guffaw. "Why the hell would we do that! Good thing the -"  
"Quiet." The shorter of the two arrancar frowns and seizes the second one, turning him around, away from the door. Ichigo can only catch snatches of words "Not enough soldiers - we need -" "No word from-" "So close the last time-" and he wants to _scream_ - _sick of waiting sick of waiting sick -_  
"Move." The arrancar opens the door as Ichigo steps back. "Take him."  
The larger arrancar grabs Uryu roughly by the arms, and Ichigo opens his mouth angrily, then catches the others black eye - _if I - if they change their minds - he's de - _and shuts it again. "Should we take the shinigami too?"  
Ichigo can almost feel the cold black gaze running over the bruises on his eyes, the blood on his nose and mouth - "There may be internal injuries. It would be a waste if _he_ died later." The arrancar takes a step towards him, and he opens his mouth again. "Wait," His throat almost sticks on the next word, but he forces it out "Please."  
The arrancar pauses, looking at him inscrutably as he kneels to sweep the fragments of Uryu's glasses into his palm. One eyebrow is raised on the dead white face when he stands up. "I hope you weren't thinking of using those as a weapon." He says dismissively.  
"Orihime will need to fix them too," He says "Uryu - he's useless without them." and for a split second the image of the Quincy pushing his glasses up his nose and insisting that he is _never_ useless flutters across his mind, he shakes it away guiltily.  
The arrancar looks at him for a moment again, then steps aside to let him walk out of the cell. Uryu is slung over the larger arrancar's shoulder in front of him.  
He's not moving.

The walk down the corridor takes eternities.

They wait in the lab while one of the arrancar goes to wake Orihime. Uryu's body has been flung across one of the cots, Ichigo sits on the other. He can hardly bear to look at the prone form, wants to flee as far away as possible, and at the same time wants to grab onto the body tightly and hold on with all his strength, as if that would keep Uryu from fading away or dissolving into dust or whatever happens in Hueco Mundo - _Ishida looking over his glasses and spouting off about reishi and spirit particles and the relationship between Hueco Mundo and Soul Society _- and he is startled to look down and find that his fingernails have torn through the fabric on the edge of the cot.  
Red hair at the edge of his vision, and he looks up. Orihime has entered, followed closely by the arrancar. She shuffles, rubbing her eyes _my fault, my fault _then looks up at the two of them. Her eyes widen with horror and fear and he hates himself for it. The golden shield appears over Uryu before he can even open his mouth to say something, anything, he doesn't know what. He can see her eyes skimming over Uryu, pausing on the blood on his mouth, the bruises around his eyes, the scrapes and swelling on his knuckles, then flicking across to Ichigo's hands, which he guiltily looks up from, knowing they are similarly bloodied. When he spots her eyes as they return to her work, there is something flaring in them that is not fear or concentration, and its intensity scares Ichigo. It is so foreign on her face that it takes him a moment to identify -  
- _anger._

Their cell is silent. Ichigo doesn't know what to say, and as the stillness solidifies around them he becomes more and more terrified to break it. Uryu sits in the corner, almost still but for his fingers twisting and fidgeting. He reaches up to adjust his glasses, and Ichigo is forcibly reminded of their repair.  
- Orihime looks up as the golden shield fades, Uryu's body stirring, one hand braced on the cot to keep herself upright. "I can help you now, Kurosaki-kun."  
He scoops up the fragments of glasses from the cot. "Could you - his glasses - he'll need them."  
He feels like an idiot the moment the words are out of his mouth. _No apology, no thank you, no acknowledgement - you drag her out of bed in the middle of the night stupid stupid stupid_  
She looks slightly startled, but replies. "Of course, Kurosaki-kun."  
The glasses reform in his hands, and he hands them over to her immediately, afraid that they'll break if he handles them too closely.  
Uryu doesn't look at him.

When he glances over at Uryu now, in the cell, he still isn't looking at him.


	10. Plans

**AN: Thanks again to all of my reviewers! You guys are wonderful and enormously helpful. Hope you all enjoy this – here things start getting _really _interesting.**

The scrap of cloth is pressed against his wrist the next day, tucked inside his sleeve by Orihime's fingers. It feels like a weight as he returns to the cell, waiting, uncertain, for the doors to close to look at it.  
_I can deal with my guard_  
The letters are sloppy and smudged, a dark russet brown that makes him think they were written in blood. The scrap of cloth they are on he recognizes as a fragment of the Quincy uniform - a fragment of the flower Uryu had made for her, he realizes.  
"Kurosaki?" Uryu isn't looking at him, he is sitting in the corner, face in shadow. "What is it?"  
He offers the cloth to him gingerly, as though he was approaching a wounded animal. Uryu leans over very cautiously and picks it out of his fingers. He scans it, his eyes flickering - first wide with shock, then, so quickly he could have mistaken it in the shadows, a flash of narrowed eyes. Then he pulls his shoulders back and adjusts his glasses.  
"Well. This changes things."  
Ichigo feels himself settling back into grooves of conversation."You don't need to tell me that, idiot."  
Ishida glances over disdainfully out of the corner of his eyes, but they don't quite meet his. "It doesn't _solve_ everything, obviously. Whatever forces we still have to get through will probably be more than Inoue-san can handle alone, which means we'll need to be able to break our spiritual binders. And," he continues, speaking faster as he gets into his explanatory mode. "The more we have to fight through to get out, the more risk there is of one of us being recaptured, so we should probably disable the surveillance system, so they -"  
"Wait, surveillance system?" Ichigo glances around the cell, expecting to see tiny cameras watching their conversation. "Since when is there a surveillance system?"  
The Quincy shoots him his typical _you're so dense I don't know why I even bother _look, which is so familiar it makes Ichigo's mouth twitch into an almost-grin. (He can almost forget what he's done.) "There are hollowified lizards at regular intervals along the corridors. They've remained in roughly the same positions since I've been observing them, therefore it's logical to suppose they're connected back to some other central hollow."  
"Okay, so Orihime takes out her guard, breaks our binders, we take out surveillance, then what? We just walk out?"  
"Of course not, Kurosaki. We'll still have to -" Was it his imagination, or had a shadow just swept across Uryu's face? " - fight through whatever arrancar come across in Las Noches, and then getting out of Hueco Mundo is an entirely different question -"  
He cuts across the thought. "So what's the deal? What do we tell Orihime?"  
Ishida adjusts his glasses. "We need to find out whether she can break our bindings, and if she knows where the surveillance center is. And -" He pauses, tilts his head, and frowns, and Ichigo has to take a moment to furiously squash the thought of how endearing the expression is. " - probably a good idea to find out if she knows which Espada is currently on duty. Just in case."  
"That's -" But Ishida is already rifling through his belt, pulling out thread and studying it.  
"Sleeve." He says, other hand outstretched, eyes down.  
"What the hell, Ish-"  
"Do I have to explain everything, Kurosaki?" He holds up the spool. "White thread." He lifts up his other arm. "White cloth." He pauses for breath. "Now, admittedly, the thread is two shades off, which is -"  
"Alright, whatever," Ichigo interrupts him before Ishida can impart any more 'expertise'. "White thread, black cloth, I get it."  
Ishida glares at him for a fraction of a second, but takes the scrap of fabric that he rips from his sleeve without comment, bending over it, needle and thread in hand. His hands flicker, the cloth twitching through the air, the thread moving so quickly it was almost blurred. Then he sits up, handing the cloth back to Ichigo.  
He reads it, his eyebrows moving further and further up his forehead.  
_Dear Inoue-san,_  
_Thank you for your message. With regard to such plans, would you be able to break and/or disable the spiritual binders currently being used on me and Kurosaki-san? In addition, are you aware/ could you ascertain where the surveillance center is located in Las Noches? Lastly, do you know which, if any, of the Espada are currently present in Las Noches?_  
_Thank you. We will update you on any upcoming plans._  
_Hoping you are well._  
_Yours sincerely,_  
_Ishida Uryu_  
_P.S. Please destroy this message as soon as is convenient. _  
Ichigo looks up at him. Uryu's fingers are twitching a little. "Ishida..."  
"Look. I know that the question marks are a little sloppy, and -"  
"You know you could have just written something _simple._"  
"What?" Ishida looks confused. "That was _perfectly _simple. I just hope it doesn't come across as discourteous..."  
"You _headed _it. And _signed _it. I don't even think normal people still do that anymore. Much less when they're _sewing_ an _escape plan_."  
The Quincy puffs up. "Just because we're imprisoned isn't a reason to abandon common politeness and decency. I can understand if you haven't seen the need for those values, Kurosaki, but _some _of us -"  
"Who else could it _possibly _be from but us?"  
"Well -" Ishida starts, a little flustered, and Ichigo grins, but then they both hear footsteps. Ichigo tucks the messages into his sleeve, and they both prepare to digest whatever slop they are to be fed tonight.

Ichigo spends the next two nights worrying about what will happen to Orihime if she is caught with their message. Finally, he hears a voice in his ear as he lies back on the cot in the lab. He stops himself from twitching from the shock of the sudden whisper from so close. As he spots the wing at the corner of his vision, he realizes it is one of Orihime's Shun Shun Rikka.  
"Kurosaki Ichigo."  
He coughs to cover his reply. "Yeah?"  
"Orihime asked us to tell you," It continues, softly, and his eyes flicker up to the girl's face. Her eyes briefly touch on his, and then look away. "She will be able to break your binders, and she has found out where the surveillance is. She also wanted me to tell you that the only Espada in Las Noches is Grimmjow."  
"Okay. Tell her thanks." He glances at the fairy again. "And, um, thank you?"  
He thinks it might be smiling, but he cannot see clearly. "You are welcome, Kurosaki Ichigo."

"Grimmjow." Ishida repeats, when he relays the information, back in their cell. "That's...good."  
"Good?"  
"Well, you beat him once already, didn't you?" he replies dismissively. "So if you're unlucky enough to have to come across him, it won't be as problematic. Now, if it had been the Primera Espada, I would have suggested we wait, but -"  
"So what's your point?" he asks "You don't think he'll be able to find us anyway, once we wreck the surveillance."  
"About that," Ishida says, looking suddenly nervous. "I don't think that'll be enough. Most of the arrancar have decent detection capabilities, they'd be able to follow a ridiculously large spiritual pressure like yours easily enough, and in any case it's possible to distinguish between hollow spiritual pressure and ours, so if they have anyone who's even remotely competent -"  
"What are you saying? That we just sit here and rot?" He starts angrily. "I can handle the arrancar, I can handle Grimmjow -"  
"If you'll let me finish, Kurosaki, I _do_ have a plan. Unlike you, I _use_ my brain, rather than just using my head to beat against every problem I-"  
"Oh, shut up," He says without real feeling, and Ishida continues.  
"First of all, though I don't doubt you'd be able to smash your way through any number of arrancar, it would cost you time and unnecessary risk. It only takes one of us being incapacitated to put us back in the same situation." Ichigo thinks of bruises on Orihime's face and the shadow of her guard behind her. "The longer we're here, the more arrancar will show up, which will cost us more time, or worse, if they call in reinforcements from the field. Besides," Ishida adds, pushing up his glasses. "there's a decent chance that if we do manage to get back out, back to Soul Society or a the living world, we'll be heading into a war zone. For all we know -"  
Trying not to think of the battle that was bound to be raging _Rukia Chad Renji _he interjects. "You said you had a plan?"  
"Yes," Ishida snaps, sitting up straighter. "First, we need to keep your ridiculous reiatsu levels under control, so you aren't like a giant beacon for all of the arrancar. This means we'll probably have to keep your spiritual binders on for a while, at least until you have to fight." Ichigo is starting to form the word _But_- when Ishida overrides him. "If you _do _need to fight, Inoue-san will be able to break them." He pauses, hands beginning to twitch, his eyes hidden in shadow. "Secondly, you'll need a diversion. Inoue-san has much better control of her reiatsu than you do, but her spiritual signature is still unique enough that it might be picked up on, _unless,_" He goes on, the last edges of light flashing off of his glasses, "I give the arrancar something _else _to worry about."  
"Wait a minute," Ichigo jumps in, feeling his insides begin to churn. "If I'm the one with the huge reiatsu signature, shouldn't I be the one who goes off as the distraction?"  
Uryu closes his eyes for something that was too long to be a blink, his mouth tight for a fraction of a second, but when he opens his eyes his face is typical Ishida. "Because then when you come _back _you're reiatsu will lead them right to us. I can control mine so that I'm largely undetectable. Besides," He continues, "My arrows can create a wide swath of destruction much more easily, since Hueco Mundo has a higher concentration of -"  
"Yeah, yeah, okay," he cuts across him. "So Orihime takes out the guard, breaks your spiritual binders, you run one way, we run the other, you smash things up, then catch up with us?"  
Uryu ducks his head, adjusting his glasses. "Essentially, yes."  
"Alright!" He exclaims, feeling the familiar determination to go forward stirring. "So we just have to tell Orihime."  
"Yes," Uryu says, sounding a little more subdued. "We'll let her know tomorrow, then you'll escape the day after that."  
"Awesome!" He reaches over and claps Uryu on the shoulder. The Quincy looks startled, almost jumping, fingers clenching on his knees. "You're a genius, Uryu!"  
He fiddles with his glasses again, resettling himself from his surprise. "It's not hard to be, in comparison to you. Anyway," He says, red still visible around the edges of his cheeks. "it's really Orihime that's done the work. She..." He trails off, his face tense, like he has tasted something bitter.  
"Yeah," Ichigo replies, Uryu's discomfort tempering his excitement. "I wonder how she's going to do it. Her - the attack one - they destroyed it, didn't they?"  
"Yes," Uryu's voice is a little crisper. "The last time that happened, the others weren't able to repair him. But I don't know..." He closes his eyes for a moment. "She's always been willing to work herself to the ground. I thought she was going to make herself sick in Soul Society, training herself to summon them without speaking."  
Ichigo feels a little squirm of _something _rise at the familiarity in Uryu's voice, which he immediately quashes. "Yeah," He says nonchalantly.  
Uryu shakes his head slightly in the silence that falls. "I should sew that message."  
"Right."

**AN: Sorry to any of you who were waiting for catharsis/resolution after last chapter. Right now they're just shutting things down (feelings? What feelings?) especially given that there are things they have to get done. More next chapter, though. It's going to be a long road. **


	11. Stitches

**AN: Hey, we hit double digits in chapter numbers last chapter and I didn't even notice! Wow, this is cool. :D**

**As always, thanks for the reviews! I hope everyone enjoys this next chapter. **

They sit in the shadows, Uryu staring at the ceiling and frowning. Finally, he takes out needle and thread from his belt. Ichigo watches, oddly fascinated, and desperate for distraction from the slithering darkness in his mind, as Uryu examines the thread, holding it up to his eyes and running a finger over it, then glancing at each of the tears in his uniform. Seemingly decided, he nods slightly, and looks back at the needle.  
It is almost like watching a little dance, Ichigo thinks, before twitching slightly and wondering what the hell is wrong with his brain, as Uryu's hands dart from rip to rip, fixing the largest cuts up. The lines of focus around his eyes make him seem more like a knight donning armor than a scrawny boy sewing up a tunic that looks like a short dress.  
The cape is still ragged, and small tears still abound in the white cloth, but he can see a tiny quirk of satisfaction at the corner of the Quincy's mouth. There is little life in his eyes, however, as his hand brushes against bare skin through the long gash on his back, and something cold wraps around Ichigo's stomach. Uryu's pale hand tightens around his spool of thread, and then relaxes. He closes his eyes. "Ku -" A breath. "Ichigo."  
Ichigo looks up, and meets Uryu's eyes for the first time since - but he shakes that thought away. "Yeah?"  
"Could you," He closes his eyes and exhales deeply, fingers twitching at the edge of the gash, "Could you help me with this?"  
Ichigo swallows. "Uryu," the blue eyes meet his and dart away, "I can't sew."  
Ishida ducks his head as he adjusts his glasses. "I'm not asking you to do it brilliantly, Kurosaki, just close it up. Even you should be competent enough to do that."  
"Yeah, but -" He glances at Uryu, the needle and thread still in hand. "Alright. But," He adds, "I don't know why you bother. Your outfit's so goofy anyway -"  
Ishida splutters and sits up straighter, unconciously smoothing out the folds in the tunic. "The uniform of the Quincy is not 'goofy'! It's a distinguished tra-"  
"All I'm saying is, you look like you're wearing a skirt."  
"I do not!" Uryu's face is furiously red, Ichigo can hardly keep from smirking.  
"Alright, I'll help." He looks down at the needle and thread. "Er, what do I do?"  
Ishida sighs. "It's very simple. First you -" And he proceeds to rattle off a long sequence so fast that Ichigo can only pick up half the words. "- a running stitch is -" He wonders if Ishida has turned off his need to breathe. " - now most people don't use -" It might be useful, not needing to breathe. Was it a Quincy thing? "- prefer to work doublethreaded, but in circumstances like this -" The sound of Ishida taking a breath makes Ichigo realize that he's finally done. "Was that simple enough for you, Kurosaki?"  
"Um..."  
Ishida ducks his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. Bending his neck back to look at the ceiling, he takes a deep breath and says. "I'll just _show _you. Surely even you will be able to follow that."  
"Hey, its not my fault you suck at explaining things."  
The Quincy glares at him, then picks up the needle and thread again. "Now watch carefully. I'll go slowly so even you can understand." Holding the needle up to Ichigo's eye level, he threads it and knots the string, then leans over , cautiously, pausing to check Ichigo's reaction _afraid of me_ and pinches a slice on the left side of Ichigo's shihakusho _the blue arrow tearing_ –

There are bigger cuts in the fabric, but he understands why Uryu has picked this one. He shifts his shoulders back and watches as the Quincy carefully weaves the string through, tying it at the ends. Uryu glances up at him, and for a split second their faces are the closest they've been since - no, not thinking about that. _Really _not thinking about that. (He can almost feel his inner self plugging his ears and going 'La la la la I can't _hear _you')  
Ishida settles back, and Ichigo hopes furiously that he's not blushing, but if he is Ishida hasn't noticed. "There. Was that _clear _enough?"  
"Yeah, sure," He replies, taking the needle and thread when Ishida hands them to him. He looks at the long gash on the back of the Quincy uniform and swallows. "Ow!" He has fumbled the needle.  
"Careful, Kurosaki!"  
"Yeah, yeah," He picks the needle up again.  
It takes him three tries to thread it, and he goes back twice over his stitches, and his knots aren't nearly as neat as Ishida's, but it gets the job done. When he finishes Uryu takes a breath. "Thank you, Ichigo."  
But he's hardly listening, because he's only just now noticed a smaller slice, just above the longer gash _black blade pale hand ki- _"There's another cut back here, I can get it."  
He can see a tendon stand out in Uryu's neck. "You don't have to worry about that one."  
"No, I got it." He threads the needle again, and doesn't prick himself. His knots are a little neater this time.  
Uryu reaches back and takes the needle and thread from Ichigo. "I'll finish fixing that hole for you, then."  
Ichigo doesn't bother to comment that he never asked for the hole to be fixed as Uryu moves around him. It takes him only a moment to seal the tear. He sits back and Ichigo can feel the force of a sigh on the back of his neck. "I wish I had proper scissors. Your hair looks even more ridiculous than usual. I doubt your sisters will recognize you when you get home."  
"At least I won't get mistaken for a girl."  
He grins as Uryu splutters, flustered.  
They both sleep that night.

He opens his eyes.  
Orihime is standing over him, gold shield blurring his vision of her. He looks down and sees skin on his arm re-forming, dissolving back into existence. He sees white in the corner of his eye, and glances over to see Uryu sitting upright on another cot. The blue eyes sweep over to meet his, and then he reaches up and adjusts his glasses, the lenses flashing.  
He looks back to Orihime, who closes her eyes and gives the faintest of nods.  
She moves her hand, and the gold shield is gone.  
"What?"  
The arrancar behind her has shouted, staring down at the shimmering gold oval stretched in front of him. The dead hand flexes, reaching for the sword, and Ichigo pushes himself upright, ready -  
- but the sword is dissolving, as is the hand, the reverse -  
- and it is only a moment before the arrancar is in two clean halves on the floor, his midsection having disappeared from under him.  
The blood splashes the hem of Orihime's dress, but her hands are steady. Ichigo wonders if Uryu is feeling the same sense of shock as he is.  
"I can break your binders now, Ishida-kun."  
Ichigo turns and sees Uryu blink, breaking his gaze from the fallen arrancar. "Yes, thank you, Inoue-san."  
The binders fall away much as the arrancar, a small segment simply ceasing to be. When she finishes, Uryu repeats. "Thank you," before striding over and picking up his selle schneider from beside the arrancar who had retrieved them from him. He straightens up. "The security room - where is it?"  
"Oh - that's no problem, it's actually right nearby." She turns very suddenly, her hair whipping out in a half-circle, and raises her shield to the wall.  
It dissolves away, then another one, then he sees a split second glimpse of monitors and alarms before that too dissolves away.  
Then he hears a crack, and everything is falling, and the thought hits him that this would be a really stupid way to die.  
But he's not dead, and he looks up to see a shield - blue, not gold, - stretched above them. In Uryu's eyes are closed tightly, and Ichigo yells out "Let's move!" and grabs his shoulder.  
They dash out into the hall, and the rest of the ceiling crashes behind them.  
"Well, that will certainly give them something else to deal with." Uryu remarks, pushing up his glasses.  
Orihime rubs the back of her neck. "Sorry, I'm still getting the hang of it."  
"It's not your fault," the Quincy replies. "Las Noches isn't a terribly well designed structure."  
"Don't tell me you're an expert on architecture _and _sewing." he cuts in.  
Ishida looks at him disdainfully. "When a castle has a room full of pillars that don't support anything, it doesn't take expertise to tell that the architect wasn't exactly renowned in his field." He pauses, then adds. "Probably the same one that did their uniform design."  
Ichigo snorts, and has to fight the urge to start laughing and not stop. He can see the faintest thin smile shimmer across Uryu's face.  
They hit an intersection, and the urge to laugh seeps away. Uryu stops and turns towards them. "I'll go this way."  
And he feels the bottom drop out of his stomach, even as Orihime says "Be careful, Ishida-kun." and he has a sudden, ridiculous urge to screw the plan, tell Uryu to stay with them, they would all get out together.  
He is so absorbed that he almost misses the reply. "Don't worry about me, Inoue-san. You should just be concerned with keeping this blockhead in line." And Uryu is looking at Ichigo, half smirking in that comfortable way, but there is something in the breadth of his gaze, the faint frown lines around his eyes, like he is trying to memorize Ichigo, something in the resignation that is shifting to the surface -  
_It makes him look very scared, and hopeless, and small, and the thought worms its way up from somewhere in the deep that he might not see him aga-_  
- he doesn't think, doesn't question what he's doing, when he started noticing the frown lines around Uryu's eyes, when he started being able to read him like this - he just takes two strides and puts his arms around the skinny, white clad Quincy.  
Ishida's shoulders snap to attention the moment he is touched, and Ichigo can feel a little hiccup of breath in his chest, but he doesn't care, because Uryu has to know - _(He has to come back, he has to, I don't -)_  
And its only when he feels two hands very cautiously brushing his back does he realize that he's been standing here for about a second too long. He feels heat rush to his face, and thumps Ishida across the back before quickly stepping back.  
Uryu's hands drop back to his sides like they've been scalded, and Ichigo feels something twinge in his stomach.  
The Quincy adjusts his glasses, looking down. "I hope you're not getting sentimental on me, Kurosaki."  
"Me?" He scoffs, "No way. But you still owe me." He swallows. "You remember? I promised I'd make you cry. Back in the park." He sees Uryu close his eyes, the edges of a smile ghosting across his face. "So you better get out of here alive."  
"Like you could ever manage that, anyway." Ishida says disdainfully, tilting his head back and looking at the ceiling."  
"You," Orihime's voice makes him look around. Her eyes are big and watery. "You guys!"  
Ichigo doesn't have time to react before she strangles them in a hug. "You've become such good friends! I'm so happy!"  
Ichigo tries to respond, but finds that he can't breathe. Uryu is still gasping when she lets them go.  
Ishida reaches up and straightens his collar, his glasses crooked on his nose. "I'll," He takes a breath. "I'll be going, then?"  
Ichigo chokes out "Yeah,"  
"Take care, Ishida-kun!" Orihime says, her voice still a little quavery.  
"See ya in a bit, Ishida,"  
The blue eyes glance back at him quickly, that same searching look, like he wants to remember everything.  
Then he is gone, a speck of white in the shadows.  
He doesn't realize that he is staring after him until he feels Orihime tug at his sleeve and say "We should go, Kurosaki-kun."  
"Right. Yeah."  
They break into a run, and Ichigo tries to let his feet trample down the memory of the look in Uryu's eyes.


	12. Promise and Sacrifice

**AN: Thanks to all of my reviewers – and welcome to La terrible La! Good to have you reading. :)**

**Sorry for the short chapter, that just seemed to be a good place to end it on. It's going to be fun from here on out! (For a certain definition of fun, that is.)**

Ichigo's hands grip his back, and he gasps, hardly able to breathe.  
His arms are warm, and he can feel his hair brushing against the side of his face, and he can feel his heart twist, and he wants desperately to stay here until Las Noches crumbles into dust, to say _Ichigo _until the sands scour his skull smooth and _God, Ichigo, why do you have to make this so _difficult -  
And he finally remembers that people are generally supposed to _return_ a hug, and so he tries to move his arms up slowly, afraid to startle him, and lets his hands lightly brush the back of Ichigo's shihakusho.  
He can feel Ichigo's sudden inhale against his chest - _tell me to stay, tell me not to go, not to risk it, please, I want - _and Ichigo cuffs him across the back, the impact startling him, almost knocking the wind out of him, jarring him back to sensibility, _stupid, selfish, selfish, _and he drops his hands quickly as Ichigo steps away. _(Hastily, guiltily, but it doesn't bother him, it can't - )_  
He avoids Ichigo's gaze, fiddling with his glasses without really noticing what he's doing, retreating into their usual patterns, the well worn trenches. "I hope you're not getting sentimental on me, Kurosaki." _(You can't care about me. You're not supposed to. I don't want you to - I don't - I don't - )_  
Ichigo snorts "Me? No way. But you still owe me." he pauses "You remember? I promised I'd make you cry. Back in the park." _Back to back, all fury and desperation and realization and everything that took him so long to understand - _Of course _he remembers _"So you better get out of here alive."  
But he can't make that promise, he's never been a good liar. He looks away again. "Like you could ever manage that, anyway." _I'm sorry Ichigo. _  
_You won't be able to keep your promise._  
He hears Orihime's voice, and turns simultaneously with Ichigo to look at her. (He is embarrassed to realize that he had almost forgotten she was there.) "You guys!"  
And then he is engulfed in his second hug in the space of two minutes, shoulder slamming into Ichigo's as Orihime's arms wind around their necks, and he can hear through the confusion and the faint ringing in his ears. "You've become such good friends! I'm so happy!"  
He glances up as he gasps, and sees her face, watery eyed but beaming, and it hits him like the impact of a blade: _I'm going to make her cry again._  
He reaches up to straighten his collar to distract himself. "I'll," He breathes in, steadying himself, he has to go now, before his resolve completely crumbles. "I'll be going, then?" It comes out a question, and he finds himself looking at Ichigo_ (tell me to stay and I will, please, I'm scare -)_  
Ichigo doesn't meet his eyes. "Yeah," His voice is rough.  
"Take care, Ishida-kun!"  
_I'm sorry, Orihime._  
"See ya in a bit, Ishida." And he is visited by the insane temptation to _tell him _- but he's made his choice, and Ichigo doesn't deserve that burden.  
_(He doesn't want his last memory of Ichigo to be of his face twisting in disgust.)_  
He allows himself a last look, trying to capture every last detail, tucking away the feel of his arms around him, his hair against his cheek.  
_I want to be thinking about him when I die. _

He speeds away down the hall, hiyenkyaku under his feet, letting his reiatsu surge.  
_And so the knight will rescue his princess. _He smiles a little. There were never, he thinks, archers in those stories. He lets himself wonder for a minute if they were there in the original, but were just forgotten through history, faded away in unimportance. The knight and the princess were always the ones who really mattered.  
He shakes his head slightly, and lets a barrage of arrows fly into the walls.  
He isn't naive. He knows that a few broken walls and the force of his reiatsu won't be enough to distract enough of the arrancar, nor will his traps be enough to delay them, particularly not the battle-driven Espada. The sexta, Grimmjow, he was sure, would hunt down Ichigo, spiritual binders or no. And as confident as he was that Ichigo could defeat the Espada again, the delay would be enough to recapture Orihime, or weaken Ichigo such that he could be captured.  
He can't let that happen. It has gone on long enough.  
For them to be able to escape, _he_ must hold the Espada off.  
He has no illusions about being able to survive this.  
But he will, he thinks, a smirk flickering across the corner of his mouth, make the Espada remember the Quincy.  
His arrancar-sensing bombs were stripped from him when he was captured, and he is saving his selle schneider for his fight, but that doesn't mean he is helpless. He has been preparing for this. He takes careful aim, weakening the ceiling supports, and then doing similar work to the floor behind him. He collapses the corridors running perpendicular to his - _anything to slow them down. _  
He feels a foreign presence flame up, so vicious it almost bowls him over. _Espada. _  
He focuses, and narrows down on the source.  
_The last Quincy, dying to save a shinigami. How ironic. _  
_(Grandfather, can you forgive me now?)_  
He accelerates in the direction of the spiritual pressure.

He catches the Espada, speeding with sonido, in a large chamber.  
He sends two arrows to land straight in front of his feet.  
The blue haired head swivels around to look at him, snarling. "Who the hell are you?"  
"I am -" He starts, assertively.  
"Tch, you're not Kurosaki, I don't have time for you." He tosses a cero offhandedly and slips into sonido.  
Then seele schneider screams in front of him, and only a last minute dodge leaves him with only a scrape across his forehead, blood streaming down.  
"I am Ishida Uryu, the last Quincy!" he shouts, pacing out of the dust, the seele schneider returned to his hand. "And I stand for Kurosaki Ichigo!"


	13. Endure

**AN: I hope my writing of Grimmjow is coming off as in character – I haven't written him before and was a little uncomfortable when I first started. As always, constructive criticism and comments are loved!**

The hallway is clear, and then, suddenly it's not.  
"It's him - Kurosaki!"  
_Arrancar - shit - _Ichigo skids to a halt, yelling, "Orihime - break -" only to find her standing in front of him, hair whipping around her.  
The golden shield slams in front of the arrancar. Orihime's feet are planted and her shoulders are drawn up, as though she were preparing for military inspection. Amidst the shouts and waving of swords, she declaims. "You will not hurt him again!" Raising her head and pushing her hands forward, Ichigo hears her voice cry out. "_I Reject!"_  
Some of the arrancar run, when they see their companions begin to fade and dissolve. It does not save them.  
When the hall is silent again, Orihime straightens up, dropping her arms. She turns around and looks back at him, a smile fixing itself back over her face. "Are you alright, Kuro -"  
He grabs her shoulder as she staggers. "Inoue?"  
She straightens herself out, her voice a little higher. "No worries, Kurosaki-kun! I've always been really clumsy - I'm just a little dizzy, that's all." But he notices the sweat beading up on her forehead, darkening the orange hair.  
"Do you need a minute? I know that takes a lot out of you." _You just killed half a dozen people - it must be the first time. What - _  
She meets his eyes. "I promised myself I'd get stronger, so I wouldn't be a burden to anyone. I wanted to be able to protect you, Kurosaki-kun. So," She turns to look down the hall. "You don't have to slow down for me."  
"Orihime," Anything he could say feels inadequate in the face of her conviction. For the first time, he recognizes a mirror of his own determination in her face. _I misunderstood her. _  
"We'd better hurry, Kurosaki-kun." She steps delicately over a severed arm without the slightest wince. "Ishida-kun will only be able to keep the rest of them distracted for a bit."  
_Uryu - _  
He follows Orihime.

"... What?"  
Uryu blinks. "I am here to fight you, Grimm -"  
"No, what the hell is a Quracy?"  
"_It's Quincy! Not Quracy!_"  
"Whatever, freak."  
This was really not how it was supposed to go. Uryu adjusts his glasses, muttering, "No wonder you want to fight Kurosaki so badly, you're exactly alike."  
"Don't compare me to that bastard shinigami!" Grimmjow snarls. "Where the hell is he, anyway? I thought you freaks would all be together."  
"He's leaving." Uryu says, ignoring how his stomach twists.  
"What the hell? I'll crush him!"  
Uryu blocks Grimmjow's blade with his Seele Schneider as the Espada makes for the exit. He holds the blade there, until he feels his arms begin to burn, then flings it away and darts backward, blocking the doorway. "You want to fight Kurosaki? Fine." He pushes up his glasses so they catch the fading light. "But I've got first dibs on beating that idiot up, so," He pulls his bow up in front of him, watching the Espada's eyes narrow. "Before you touch him," He tilts his head upward, takes a breath, "You'll have to kill me."  
There is a moment of silence, and Uryu closes his eyes and concentrates his will.  
Then the laughter comes, and he feels like he has been flooded with cold water.  
_He sounds just like _it.  
"He's _your _prey? _You_?" Grimmjow cackles. Uryu stands, keeping his mouth closed.  
Looking up at his stare, the Espada snorts. "Guess I'll just have to crush you quick, before I catch him."  
He launches ceros from both hands, barreling towards Uryu.  
The dust rises from the explosion, and Grimmjow smirks, striding through the cloud.  
"I don't think you'll find it that easy." The glowing bow is pressed against his back.  
"What the _-_" The Espada doesn't even have time to turn around.  
"_Licht Regen!_"  
It takes intense focus just to keep his feet planted against the explosion. He is still blinking away the lights from his eyes when his attacker hurtles out of the dust.  
He raises his bow to block the blade, but the force of the attack still hurls Uryu across the room, slamming him into the wall. When he can look up, he can see that the point-blank attack has barely bruised Grimmjow. Blood oozes out of scrapes on his sides.  
He hardly has time to wince before he is leaping out of the way of another cero. He lands on the other side of Grimmjow and slashes Seele Schneider across the Espada's back. As he speeds away from the Espada's fist, he can feel the spiritual energy recharging him. The satisfaction immediately disappears when he feels a blade slam through his shoulder. He lets spiritual threads pull him upwards, out of the way, wrapping them around his shoulder to move it properly, concentrating reishi behind him as a shield. _I can't keep this up. I need to slow him down._  
Grimmjow raises his arm, touching the wound on his back, "You got through my hierro." he lifts his hand, looking at the blood on his fingers. "You might be more interesting than I thought."  
He's barely listening, the spiritual threads rising from his shoulder give him an idea. _That means I'll have to go close range - that'll put him at an advantage. But I can take as much damage as I need to with the ranso tengai, especially if I can keep pulling spiritual energy off him with seele schneider._  
His planning is cut off when Grimmjow charges him. "Quit standing around, asshole!"  
Uryu raises his bow and twists it to catch and hold the blade, and slams seele schneider through Grimmjow's other hand to prevent him charging another cero. He frowns, trying to focus on directing spiritual threads down his hand and into his bow while ignoring the burning of absorbing the loose reiatsu being released from the Espadas hand.  
Grimmjow snarls, pushing the sword against his bow, and he has to concentrate on holding the bow together, feeling his arm strain, wrist beginning to buckle. He feels the spiritual threads finally begin to wrap around Grimmjow's sword, and urges them further up.  
A huffed "Hah!" makes him look around in horror, Grimmjow's hand is directly against his wrist, having forced its way up the blade of seele schneider, and it is beginning to glow -  
He lets his bow dematerialize and drops like a stone, dodging the explosion of the cero. It is smaller than previously, and he gasps as he pulls in the reiatsu that seele schneider has loosened from the blast.  
Grimmjow growls "What the hell?" glaring down at his hand and yanking the blue blade out of it, tossing it aside. He fires another cero, experimentally, at Uryuu, and the Quincy has to be careful to let the spiritual threads move with the Espada's arm so that he does not break them as _that thing_ did, before dodging quickly to retrieve seele schneider from the dirt.  
When he turns, he sees Grimmjow staring at the explosion, apparently satisfied, then looking down at his bleeding hand again. "That's no normal sword, is it, freak?"  
Uryu pushes his glasses up, feeling a bit more self assured. "I'm glad you noticed. As a matter of fact, this isn't a sword at all. This is seele schneider, a Quincy weapon designed to loosen spiritual particles so that a Quincy, such as myself, can absorb them and use them in combat." Lifting the blade, glasses lenses flashing, he adds. "To put it more simply, _I_ now have part of your energy."  
The Espada sneers. "Let's see if you can absorb this, then," Grimmjow raises his bleeding hand, bracing it with his other arm, and blue light begins to swirl around his fingertips -

Ichigo feels queasy. He is breathing hard, as is Orihime, but he has no idea how close they are to the edge of Las Noches.  
And Uryu still hasn't caught up with them.  
_He's okay, he's probably just busy constructing some stupid elaborate trap, _He grins, _or he got distracted giving arrancar fashion advice._  
_(Definitely not bleeding, dying, screaming for Ichigo to help him while faceless arrancar laugh and laugh and laugh -)_  
He's so distracted that it takes him a moment to realize that Orihime has stopped. He shoves down his mental image furiously - _Like Uryu would ever ask for my help - _  
"Orihime?"  
"Kurosaki-kun-" Her eyes are closed, like she is concentrating, but the rest of her face looks relaxed, happy even. "Kurosaki-kun, I feel Tatsuki-chan."  
"What?" Orihime could have expressed a desire to open a donut shop for arrancar, and he would have been less surprised. "_Tatsuki_? Here?"  
She nods. "It's definitely her, I'd know her anywhere." She says, smile glimmering through the edges of her face, looking very far away. "She's hard to pick out though - there are lots of other spiritual pressures. Kurosaki-kun -" She opens her eyes and looks at him. "I think they're shinigami."  
He feels a tremendous surge of relief underneath his incredulity. "Shinigami? Can you tell -?"  
Her eyes are closed again, brows furrowed. "I think -" A pause. "I think Kuchiki-san is with them! And - and I think that might be Sado-kun, too. There's lots of spiritual pressure - Captains - I think -"  
_Rukia - Chad - they're alive -_

He sees red.  
He reaches up and touches the lenses of his glasses, feels the slickness of blood -  
_- Blinding blue - massive - leaping - blasting explosion - falling - everything collapsing -_  
He starts to push rubble off himself, relieved to find that he has only sustained a few cuts and bruises from the impact and the flying shards.  
"So you survived," He looks around, Grimmjow is striding towards him, kicking fragments of the shattered wall.  
"Surprised?" Uryu asks, hoping that he sounds more assured than he feels.  
The Espada snorts. "So you're good at running away." He glances down at the rubble still covering Uryu's legs. "Looks like you'll have some trouble with that now." He adds, smirking, as he raises his blade -  
_Slow it down - just easy - gradual -_  
He can feel the movement of the blade ruffle his hair, but he was able to dodge, leaning forward to grab both of Grimmjow's ankles, twisting to wrap more spiritual threads around them -  
"What the -!"  
- and he concentrates the spirit particles around him, as though he were trying to use ranso tengai for his whole body, but instead pushes _out - _  
- the pile of rubble explodes, hurtling across the room, and he glimpses Grimmjow jumping back, swatting the rocks away.  
On the cleared floor, Uryu stands up, picks up seele schneider and returns it to his belt, and cleans the blood off of his glasses, feeling his fingers shake, the leaden bindings of exhaustion creeping around him. _I need more energy._  
As if in answer to his thought, Grimmjow returned, hurtling from the dust - _slow him down - _and he is able to raise his blade in return, focusing on siphoning off energy from the sword, feeling the grinding sending cracks up his arm, feeling his legs shudder.  
_Endure it._


	14. Pride

**AN: As always, thanks to my reviewers. I hope you enjoy this chapter!**

Ichigo's feet skim across the hall, running now seems so much easier, _Alive, alive, they're alive_ The thought races through his mind as he and Orihime race down the hall, and she looks as light and happy as he feels. He had almost forgotten the last time he had seen her look this unreservedly happy.  
Their friends are _alive, _and here, coming to rescue them.  
So why does it feel like ice water is seeping up into his stomach?  
Whenever he blinks, he isn't seeing Rukia, or Chad, or Renji, but Uryu's blue eyes, searching, memorizing, the worn resignation -  
_- he nervousness in his face when he suggested the diversion, the tightness in his mouth, the how he closed his eyes -_  
_- and he stared at Ichigo as if he would never see him again -_  
_- never see him again - _  
"That _idiot._" He skids to a halt. "Dammit, Ishida."  
"Kurosaki-kun?"  
"Orihime," He starts, looks up at her, fear and anger warring inside him, and he can hardly focus enough to speak. "Orihime, I need you to break my binders. I think," He swallows. "I think something must have gone wrong with Uryu." _Or something _will _go wrong, because if he's stupid enough to do what I _think _he's doing, I'm going to _kill _him. _  
The corner of his brain that isn't raging or panicking notices that Orihime looks faintly confused, worried. "Maybe I should -"  
"No," He tries to sound calm, to smile, act like he has a plan. "You need to get out, find the rescue party, and tell them what's going on. They probably don't even know that we escaped. Tatsuki," he adds, desperate to persuade her, to go _Uryu bleeding, dying, screa - _"Tatsuki, and Rukia, and Chad - they'll all want to see you."  
She stares at him for a moment, biting her lip. "O-okay, but," she says, raising her hands. "Please be careful, Kurosaki-kun."  
He lifts the corner of his mouth in a cocky grin as the binders dissolve, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "Don't worry about me. Tell the others I'll see them in a bit."  
When the binders have fully faded away, the reiatsu of shinigami captains is almost overwhelming, but he doesn't investigate them, reaching out instead to try and feel in the other direction, seeking Uryu's unique signature. He closes his eyes to focus more intently, and he begins to feel, almost like the faint brush of a whisker on the edge of his senses, the twist and flow of white spirit ribbons. As he leans closer, trailing back to the source, a jagged edge overwhelms him, and his eyes snap open, concentration hurled away.  
_Grimmjow._  
When he sees that Orihime has reached out to him, he realizes that his horror at being proven right must have been blanched onto his face. "It's okay, I found him." He replies to the unspoken question, reassuringly, he hopes. She nods, and he slips into shunpo before she can ask anymore, before he has to explain, because if he has to say it out loud, see the horror on her face, he doesn't know what he'll do.

Uryu screams.  
Blood spurts from his leg, and Grimmjow's snarl disappears, sliding into maniacal laughter. His blade sends crimson droplets splattering downward as it swipes upward.  
The Quincy speeds backward, securing more spiritual threads around his leg, aided by the reiatsu he has absorbed from the Espada. No major tissue has been damaged, thanks to the split second delay his puppetry has given him, but he can feel those strands fraying. Between lifting his own body and restraining Grimmjow's, his energy is limited. _I can't hold on for close range combat. _  
Blinding ceros follow his retreat, pinning him, he dodges one, scrapes the second with seele schneider, desperate for energy, summons the shield of hirenkyaku to cushion the impact of another. With that last effort, he feels the threads on Grimmjow's arm fade, as the blast sends him spiralling across the room.

Ichigo hurries down the hall, a blaze of fury lighting each shunpo.  
_How could he do this to us? _  
_(Red blood spurting, Uryu's screams echoing - )_  
_How could he possibly be so stupid?_  
_(Dying, gasping, Grimmjow laughing, laughing - )_  
_How dare he leave us like that! How could he lie to us?_  
_(Eyes fading, glazing, blue marbles, not Uryu, not - )_  
_Stupid, stuck up, insane, proud, self righteous son of a bitch Quincy._  
_(Collapsing, gasping, blood bleeding dirt, neck bent wrong ogod blood - )_  
"Goddamnit," He mutters, seizing on to the trail of Uryu's spirit energy like a liferaft. "How could someone so fucking _smart _think _this _was the best plan?"  
_(Does he really think he matters that little?)_

He darts behind one of the larger blocks of rubble to gather himself, pushing his glasses up his nose as he takes in deep breaths, trying to gather the ambient energy while he still has time.  
"If you're just going to run and hide, I'd be better off finding Kurosaki." He hears the Espada scoff.  
_Idiot. _  
He leans out from behind the rock and sends a blast of Licht Reigan towards the exit of the room. The ceiling crumbles, collapsing the end of the hall and blocking the exit.  
He feels a faint breeze. "You think that'll stop me?" growls a voice from right behind him -  
- "No, but this might." He has reversed their positions and slashes seele schneider across the Espada's back again, as deep as he can through his hierro, then launches a barrage of arrows before Grimmjow can return the favor. He doesn't bother to send them at his opponent, but aims at the ground close around him, smashing it to pieces and sending the Espada tumbling down. Flying away, he picks out a circle on the ceiling just above the pit, and sends that crashing down on top.  
He can breathe for a split second before twin blasts send debris hurtling through the air, and he has to flip his shield in front of him to avoid being pummeled by the cascade.  
Grimmjow emerges, huffing and bleeding, from the chasm. "Now you're really starting to piss me off." He snarls, raising his blade, and Uryu can see the beginnings of a blue glow  
- _Resurreccion? - no - I can't -_  
He sends a swarm of bolts down at the Espada, letting his blood fall freely on the cracked and shattered floor.  
_The longer I keep him from achieving Resureccion, the longer I can stay alive, the longer Ichigo has to escape. _  
He repeats it as blood spurts from his fingernails, an overlong mantra (but when has he ever been simple?) He knows the arrows won't damage the Espada, but they might distract him just enough to keep him from advancing.  
Rain after rain falls from his bow, and he can feel blood and energy seeping out of him. Dimly, he realizes that all of the energy that he can absorb won't make any differences when he runs out of the reserve to hold them together.  
_Maybe they're out. They've had enough time by now. They must be safe. I can rest..._  
A geyser of blood spurts out of the crook of his arm. _What am I thinking? I can't give up. I won't lie down and die in front of this monster. How could I ever look Grandfather in the eye if I did?_  
He lets the rain fall.

Ichigo hits the wall of rubble, feeling the clash of spiritual pressures beyond.  
_I'm not too late._  
_(Bleeding, gasping - )_  
He shouts Uryu's name, fruitlessly, hearing it only echo back from the jagged rocks. He leaps upward in shunpo, looking for the top of the pile, clinging on to the ribbon of Uryu's spirit energy, dragging it out from under the pressure of Grimmjow.  
_(Please, don't let me be too late.)_

Uryu can feel control of the arrows slipping away from his bloodslick fingers, his vision beginning to blur as sweat drips into his eyes. Each barrage is fuzzier than the next, peripheral arrows fading away in midair.  
The dust is beginning to clear as his blasts slow.  
Grimmjow isn't there.  
Laughter rings out from behind him.

Ichigo feels a charging of spiritual pressure, tearing at the edges of his concentration - Grimmjow.  
_Shit._  
He leaps higher.

Uryu spins, and there is blue light gathering at Grimmjow's palm.  
_Oh no. _  
He tenses, ready to jump.

Ichigo reaches open space, sees the Quincy, arms drenched in blood.  
"_Uryu!_"

Uryu hears Ichigo's voice, his name - _no, you idiot, why - _and he has to tell him to go, to run -

Ichigo catches the sound of Grimmjow's laughter, sees the blue blast - _no -_

Uryu is still frozen when the pain hits him -

_God, no, Uryu -_

Uryu screams -

Ichigo hurls himself forward -

And there is a moment of clarity, as though Uryu had simply been sitting in meditation, and has reached a wellspring of insight, like he has finally seen the twist that will make the math problem work, felt his hand move the right way to make a stitch.  
_Oh, I get it now._  
And he embraces the cero, pulls it into himself as though it were only the slightest flicker of reiatsu.  
He feels himself being burned alive from the inside out, and _doesn't care._  
And then Ishida Uryu lets go.  
_It_ tears through everything, and he is left to fall.

Ichigo watches in horror as the cero hits Uryu, watches as Uryu burns -  
- and then the blue light is shifting up, around Uryu, his head thrown back, dark hair flying-  
- and he explodes, a crescent of light hurling outward, shattering -  
He hardly realizes that he is moving, doesn't even register the sight of Grimmjow collapsing -

Someone is calling his name. _Why are they shouting? I'm so tired... It hurts -_

Ichigo seizes Uryuu from midair, feeling his hands slip on blood, sinking from the impact of his fall.  
"Uryu! Uryu?"

His breath is knocked out of him, he feels arms wrap around him, warmth.  
_Ichigo. Its Ichigo._  
_I'm alive?_  
"You idiot, Kurosaki, stop shouting."  
"Idiot! Me?" _Wham _He is jarred away by a sudden kick, hitting the ground with a thump, scraping raw nerves.  
"What the hell was that for?"  
_Wham_ "For _this_!" Ichigo jabs a finger at the ruined room. "What the hell were you -"  
"What am _I _doing? _You're _supposed to be with Orihime! Why the hell did you co -"  
"Shut up!" _Wham _"You are not allowed to get caught up in some stupid duel with that punk! You are not _allowed_ to stay behind!" Ichigo storms towards him and pulls him upright. "I made a promise to get all of my friends out of here! Chad! Rukia! Renji! Orihime! _And you!" _Ichigo looks at him straight in the face, and Uryu feels his cheeks go red. "So staying behind _is not up to you_! You are one of us, so you have to stay alive! You can't just think of yourself!"  
"Ichigo -" Uryu starts, but Ichigo steps back and turns around.  
"Whatever you were trying to do - whatever your reasons - it was a bad decision." Ichigo looks back over his shoulder at him, but doesn't meet his eyes. "Didn't you think - Orihime would miss you if you left?"  
The pause, the left out _I _isn't lost on him. He stands, open mouthed for a moment, then, settles back, letting out a breath. He adjusts his glasses, carefully looking away from Ichigo. "I don't know what dumb idea you've gotten into your head, Kurosaki, but don't be so presumptuous. Not everything - "  
Loud huffing from the rubble makes them both turn, a bloodied Grimmjow hauling himself out of the wreckage. "What the hell... do you idiots... think its over?" Pulling himself upright, he unsteadily raises his sword. "Do you think that... shit... is enough... to kill me?"  
Ichigo's eyes flicker back at Uryu, and he realizes how he must look, covered in blood. Glancing down, he realizes with a jolt that the Quincy pentagram has shattered. _No -_  
Ichigo pulls out his blade, stepping in front of -  
_Crash!_  
"Oy, Ichigo." There is a hole in the wall, and familiar figures are gathered around it. "Looks like you've gotten yourself into trouble again."  
"Rukia?"


	15. Reunion

**AN: Hey all! Here we begin 'Part Two' of What Turns Up in the Dark – now with a much larger cast! **

**We're now only 5 chapters away from the end of what I've already written, so to make sure you keep getting consistent updates for as long as possible, I'm going to slow the update schedule down to twice a week. With any luck, this should give me enough time to get a bit more ahead, so you don't have to wait weeks for updates. Updates will now be Sunday and Wednesday.**

**Thanks for your understanding, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.**

"Well, who else would it be?" says a tuft of red hair that resolves into a shinigami. "Looks like you got yourself in over your head again, Ishida."  
"Hey, Renji," Ichigo says, almost nonchalantly, and Uryu is quite sure he must be bleeding out on the ground, because this is all clearly a hallucination, like one of those near death experiences that got so much attention, except instead of lights and choirs he got pineapple haired shinigami. _I guess that would make sense. Do you go to soul society if you die in Hueco Mundo? That's weird..._ _God, I hope I don't go like Kurosaki, waving my arm at invisible monsters... _  
Ichigo's voice stirs him from his thoughts. "Where's Orihime?"  
"She's safe. She's with Tatsuki and Isane-fukataichou."  
Yes, this definitely has to be a near death experience, because there is no chance that _Arisawa Tatsuki_, ridiculous karate talent or no, would be in Hueco Mundo.  
But if he's having a near death experience, shouldn't the _pain _have gone away?  
There's a firm grip on his arm, steadying him as he sways, and he hisses at the press of fingers on raw wounds, and this, he thinks, can't possibly be a hallucination, as he stumbles and leans against Ichigo's shoulder.  
"Uryu - needs to see her." Ichigo says, stuttering as he tightens his grip on Uryu. "He's been doing stupid stuff again."  
"Oh, and I forgot that was _your _job." He huffs slightly, not quite able to cover the indignity of having to lean against Kurosaki Ichigo to stay upright. "My apologies."  
"Like I'm not the one who was here to save your sorry ass -"  
_Clap. _"Well," Rukia interjects, clear and precise and faintly amused, "Now, that was a lovely display of brotherly affection -" Uryu's eyes flick over to Ichigo, and he thinks their faces must look very similar, that sort of pinched up expression like he'd just been told he had a stain of something particularly disgusting on his shirt. "-but if we can get on with the problem at hand?"  
Grimmjow growls, then wheezes, somewhat diminishing the intimidating effect. "Anytime, midget. I wiped the floor with you once," He licks his lips. "Barely an appetizer."  
She looks at him coolly, one hand resting very lightly on the hilt of her sword, and the other, Uryu notices dimly, like a vice on Renji's wrist, keeping him from drawing his own blade.  
Too focused on Rukia, he isn't even aware of Grimmjow raising a wavering, glowing hand. What he is aware of is the breeze that rushes past him. Then the breeze resolves itself into color, which resolves itself into a ninja. A shinigami-ninja. He wracks what is left of his functioning brain to remember if he has seen her before.  
"Shall I kill him, Yoruichi-san?" She asks breathlessly, and only then does he recognize the other figures leaning over the wall.  
It takes a second of staring at them for bits to fall into place in his brain, and comprehension of her question to come through. Then he realizes he is looking at Ichigo, must have turned to look at him before he even processed it (_He's doomed, he really must be.)_ and he sees Ichigo's expression is tight, set.  
"No," Uryu says, before he even realizes that he has opened his mouth. Everyone stares at him, and he coughs, and tries to lift his arm to adjust his glasses before he realizes that it really isn't working that well. "Well, honestly, it's very simple." _Stalling, stalling, stalling - _"Even Kurosaki could figure it out, so unless all of you shinigami combined are less intelligent than him, which I'm not sure is even possible -" And then he catches a glimpse of the shinigami-ninja glaring daggers at him, and why yes, her sword does look very sharp, and no, its not that he's frightened or half dead or anything like that, it's just that he does like to be concise, to the point, very direct, none of this endless blathering - "But given that you all are here, I'm assuming Aizen and his army have been defeated, and therefore this is the last remaining Espada. That means," He coughs, splattering blood on the ground, and feels Ichigo's shoulders move as he shouts for someone to get Orihime, now, "That means that he is the most powerful hollow in Hueco Mundo. You remove him, and what happens?" He asks no one in particular.  
"Well, what?" Ichigo asks, absently, his grip on Uryu's shoulder very tight.  
"A power struggle. Fighting, chaos, more hollows displaced, more hollows in soul society and the living world. You don't," His vision is sort of blurry now, "Don't break up the power structure. It does... bad things..."

When he comes back to awareness, he can hear Orihime crying. "- won't come. I'm sorry - I can't - I'm sorry -" There is a splash on his arm, stinging in the wounds, and he opens his eyes to see that she is sobbing. There is a hand on her shoulder, and spikes of dark hair, and he realizes - unless this really is the strangest possible near death experience ever - that Arisawa Tatsuki is indeed there in Hueco Mundo. She has one arm wrapped protectively around Orihime's shoulder, the other stroking her hair.  
Ichigo's voice, from somewhere close above him. "Its alright, its not your fault, you're exhausted." Tatsuki's mouth is too tight for speech, and, seeing the look in her eyes, Uryu wonders if, sometime late at night, glancing over at Ichigo as he slept, he had ever worn that same expression. The minute another shinigami leans in, though, her eyes are steel globes, as though she is daring the whole world to try and take this girl out of her arms. As the shinigami, a tall, silver haired woman, begins to speak, he feels pressure released from his shoulder.  
"Thats alright, I'll be able to fix him, it will just take a little bit longer." She smiles uncertainly, raising her hands over Uryu's abdomen cautiously, as though she is afraid that one of the circle surrounding him will strike out at the intrusion.  
As she begins to chant, Uryu looks up to see Ichigo crouching behind him, Sado, Rukia, and Renji hovering to the side.  
"What happened to Grimmjow?" He hacks.  
"Uh, that," Ichigo looks back over his shoulder, "the ninja captain, what's her name?"  
"Soi-Fon-taichou?" Rukia replies, one eyebrow twitching upward.  
"Yeah, her," he continues, ignoring the dismissive tone. "She knocked him out. He's still alive though. Apparently your power structure stuff was fairly convincing." He's smirking, just at the edges, but he meets Uryu's eyes, reassuring Uryu that he made the correct split-second decision.  
"And - everyone else - you're all okay?"  
A rumbling voice, Sado, "Of course." When he glances upward, there is the faintest suggestion of a smile on the otherwise impassive face.  
He shifts his arm an inch to the right, towards Orihime. "Inoue-san? Are you alright?" She nods, wiping her eyes, and he adds, a little more quietly. "I'm sorry Kurosaki ran out on you."  
"It's okay, I'm just," She stutters, and looks up at Ichigo, "I'm just so glad you're both alright!" Tatsuki tightens her arm around her, not even looking at Uryu, and he can begin to see the spikes of her hair go fuzzy at the edges.  
"Ichigo?" He forces out.  
"Yeah?" The pressure on his shoulder returns as Ichigo's face swims into view.  
"I think," He takes a deep breath, trying to focus on Ichigo's eyes. "I might be about to pass out again."  
He smiles tightly. "We'll be here."

A projectile slams into him the second he steps out of the passage.  
"Straw-berry!"  
Reflexively, he hurls the thing away from him with all his force, slamming it into the wall.  
"Owww"  
His limbs shake with the sudden rush of adrenaline, his breath comes out in huffs. It's Keigo, just Keigo.  
Shaking off his momentary panic, he darts over and offers him a hand up. "Sorry dude," he says, throat tight.  
When Keigo doesn't take his hand, he looks down. His eyes are watery. "It's so good to have you back!" He exclaims, throwing his arms around Ichigo's knees, nearly sending him tumbling to the floor.  
"Asano-san, there's no need to be so overdramatic." Mizuro says, putting a hand on Ichigo's back to steady him.  
"Hey, Miz," Ichigo replies, surprised at how calm his own voice sounds. "How've you been?"  
Mizuro smiles enigmatically. "Well enough. And you?"  
He laughs, and it sounds jarring to his ears. "I've been better."  
While Mizuro gently pries Keigo off him, Ichigo's eyes fall on his family, Isshin, holding a cigarette, Karin, hair shorter than ever, one hand on a tearful Yuzu's shoulder, the other shoulder held by Kon, in Ichigo's body, fingers wrapped tightly around his stuffed lion.  
Ichigo smiles at them. Karin lets go of Yuzu, and the small, blonde haired girl walks towards him. Her steps are slow, and cautious, like she is approaching a wild animal, and he realizes how much his entrance has scared her.  
"Hey, Yuzu." He forces out, kneeling, and then all he hears is a choked sob before her arms are flung around his neck and she is weeping into his shoulder.  
"Hey, hey," He pats her hair. "It's okay, I'm back, it's okay."  
He looks up and makes eye contact with Karin, who gives him a faint nod. His dad blows out a puff of smoke.  
He barely picks up on shinigami - ninja's words as Yuzu stands up, hiccuping. " - will have to go to Soul Society, make a full report -"  
"No."  
It is the first word he has heard out of Tatsuki, and he turns around, startled.  
"She's - they're - staying here." Cutting off the shinigami, she continues. "They're exhausted, and you won't do them any good dragging them across dimensions and making them rehash the hell they've been through tonight. They're staying home." Her arms have tightened around Orihime, he can see every tendon, and the redhead leans into her, eyes tight shut.  
He can see the shinigami's gaze shift from Tatsuki's face to Orihime's, the faint softening in her eyes. As he looks between the pair, the shinigami and Tatsuki, he wonders what the three of them who have been rescued must look like to the others, baggy eyes, hollowed cheeks, matted hair. He feels a strange sense of detachment.  
He looks around for Uryu.  
He is gone.


	16. What is Left

**AN: Agh, sorry for the relatively short chapter again. Next one is longer and has a lot of information, so you have that to look forward to.**

Uryu finds the sets of spare clothes where Urahara said they would be.  
He holds them carefully, to avoid transferring blood stains, as he searches for a bathroom. Finally, he finds himself freed of the records of his pain, save for the shadows lurking around his eyes and cheekbones, and his overlong hair. He drags his fingers through it, staring at the mirror, almost disbelieving.  
He looks down at the floor, but the image there isn't much better. He doesn't know what to do with the bloodstained rags of his uniform. It's irreparable, that much is clear, he will have to sew an entirely new one from scratch, but as his hand hovers over the trash can with it he feels his stomach squirm.  
He ends up stuffing it into a Urahara Shoten shopping bag, frustrated with his own irrationality, and hurries out the door.

It's only after he's entered the building that he realizes he no longer has the key to his apartment - if, he hopes, it is still his.  
Nervousness stiffens his arms as he walks up to the counter. _It has to still be mine. I had enough funds for at least a month, and I know the recurring option was working. I can't have been gone for longer than a month._  
"Ishida-san, haven't seen you for a while." The manager looks at him appraisingly. "Almost thought you weren't coming back. You look like hell."  
He opens his mouth, finds it empty of words, and forces his face into a smile. "Ah - yes. A - friend - had a bit of an emergency. Had to go help out. Very important." He shuts his mouth, smiles again, and nods. "I seem to have lost my key though. Could I possibly get a duplicate?"  
The manager mutters agreeable things while rummaging behind the counter and he nods and hmms back until he takes the key into his hand and almost runs up to his apartment.  
His hands shake as he opens the door. He reaches for the light switch, but the room stays dark.  
_I never set up a recurring option for my electric bills, did I...No, I never thought I would be gone for that long._  
He walks further in, tries turning on the faucets, finds the same result as with the lights. He takes a very deep breath, his fingers digging into the counter, then opens his refrigerator. The reek makes him turn his head - everything had rotted with no power.  
He carts a bag of groceries down to the dumpster, setting aside any hopes of a proper, cooked meal for the first time in a month.  
When he returns, he steps across the room deliberately, switching on his laptop - a grudging purchase of the very cheapest available model, only because it was so useful for getting commissioned work - to check his bank balance. The sight makes his stomach drop.  
_I need more money, or I won't be able to stay here another week._  
He clenches and relaxes his hands while his stomach ties itself into knots, then he finally moves his fingers to open his email.  
He's had three commissions while he has been gone, he scans them, noting the dates, the details of the requests. He will have to give them a discount for the late delivery, he thinks, grimacing, but it will help, and he's almost entirely certain his closet still has the materials needed for each one, thankfully.  
He copies the details down onto a scrap of paper in the light from the screens glow, then shuts it down to save the power. He pulls out a flashlight, and props it up on the lamp above his desk, then pulls out fabric, scissors, needle, and thread, from his closet.  
Ishida Uryu opens a can of cold soup from his cupboard, and sits down to work.

He wakes up at two in the morning, the silence having started him. He is halfway through reaching out for Ichigo's spiritual pressure when comes into full awareness. As he feels the force, steady, on the edge of his awareness, he becomes aware of the quiet, the lack of another person breathing in the room.  
Snorting with impatience, he moves to turn on a fan before he remembers he has no electricity. He digs his nails into his hands, pushing his glasses up from his eyes with his knuckles, and goes to his bathroom, swallows two painkiller tablets to dull the ache of his chest wound, and forces himself back to work.

They go home.  
Rukia, Renji, Yoruichi, and the ninja - he's never going to be able to think of her as anything else - had already left for Soul Society, with promises that they'd return soon so he could visit. (Though the look on the ninja's face suggested it would be less a visit and more a slow simmering interrogation. He was trying not to think about that)  
Mizuro dragged Keigo off of Ichigo after Keigo attempted another tearful hug, the shorter boy reminding him what his sister would do if he was home past curfew.  
Chad had meandered off with hardly two words, just a very firm grip on Ichigo's shoulder and a faint smile, returning to his apartment.  
And Tatsuki and Orihime had still been holding on to each other like - well, like they were the last two people in the world, really. He felt guilty about it, but he had almost been relieved when they left for Orihime's apartment - and it wasn't only because he still had a sinking suspicion that Tatsuki was planning on beating him up at the soonest opportunity for letting Orihime get hurt. The way they looked - it made him feel uncomfortable, being there, like he was intruding on something private, a cathartic moment he hadn't been meant to walk in on.  
… and there was also the minor detail that it kept making him think of _Ishida_, of all things, and if that wasn't unsettling as hell, he didn't know what was.  
Anyway.  
He returns his thoughts very forcibly to his surrounding family, walking through the lamplit streets with hardly a word. He doesn't quite know what to do with this silence - his imaginings of being home had never quite hit upon this point.  
Kon, however, seems to be determined not to let the silence last a second longer, even though he has been oddly quiet up till now. Standing up in his fuzzy lion body on Yuzu's shoulder - Ichigo having reoccupied his own body before coming out onto the street - he breaks down into sobs - "Oh, woe! To have been reunited so briefly with the wondrous Orihime-chan, and to have been torn away so cruelly -"  
"I thought you were busy fawning over Rukia." Mutters Karin, with a sidelong glare that fails to have any sharpness.  
Kon clasps both hands to his chest. "My mighty heart is large enough for both. And indeed, what heart could fail to be moved by such loveliness - such grace -"  
And Ichigo finds himself laughing, really, properly, for the first time in a while. "How on earth have you made it through this whole time without getting my body beaten up?"  
But when he looks down, for a split second, the plush lion looks serious - but only a second.  
And that's when it hits him, the magnitude what's happened, whatever they've been through, that it's enough to make _Kon_ look serious, _Kon -_  
He doesn't laugh.


	17. Already Gone

**AN: Thanks as always to my lovely reviewers. I apologize in advance for any anguish caused by this chapter.**

He can't sleep.  
In his nights on the hard floor, in the dirt and the smell of his own piss and blood, he had dreamed of this bed, clean, and soft, with the fresh air from the window.  
So why can't he sleep?  
He lays, straight backed, staring at the ceiling, and then, suddenly, sits up, swings his legs over the edge of the bed, sick of stillness.  
He stands in the window frame, a shinigami, and steps outside.

When he slashes the first hollow down, he feels a sense of fundamental _rightness, _like, for a moment, his simple, straightforward act has made the last - what has happened - not have happened.  
But when the hollow's gone, the adrenaline isn't, and he feels himself -  
- scream, and tear his sword through the air -  
- into a tree, which goes careening down.  
At which point, leaves falling into his hair, he realizes. _Oh. That was incredibly stupid. _  
And he's _still_ thinking of Uryu.  
He can't feel the Quincy's spiritual pressure, and feels his stomach clench -  
- _grimmjow blood cero no why -_  
- and reaches out, carefully, sensing Karin, nearest, his dad (_What?_), Hat and Clogs, (he slips into shunpo, searching) Chad, Orihime, near the much fainter signature of Tatsuki, and then -  
- his signature is so weak. He knows Uryu can control it, make it almost undetectable, but this - it doesn't feel like that.  
When his cross exploded, Uryu had lost his powers.  
Again.  
_(For me)_  
And so he sits, outside, on the curb, and holds on to the frayed spirit ribbons like they are the last thing keeping him in this world.

A hand on his shoulder wakes him up from where he has fallen asleep on the sidewalk, and he lashes out.  
His fist is caught by a much larger hand. "I'm glad to see your reflexes haven't dulled since you've gone without regular wake up calls."  
He relaxes his fingers. "Hey, dad."  
Isshin looks down at him. "Let's head home. We don't want Yuzu to scold us, now?"  
"Yeah," He mutters, standing up.  
They walk down the lamplit sidewalk, silent. When Isshin speaks, shadows hang heavily off his face. "You don't have to tell me what happened when you were gone."  
He snorts, and says bitterly. "I'll have to tell Soul Society." The minute he says it, he wonders what the point was - what the hell does his dad know about the shinigami?  
What had Urahara told his dad, anyway? And what was the deal with his spiritual pressure?  
His thoughts are cut off by Isshin's words, low and quiet. "They won't need to know the details. What they'll want to know is why Aizen left you alive."  
"Whether I'm a threat, you mean." How is it that he's walking here, talking about Soul Society and his own spiritual powers with his dad, his goofy dad, who supposedly couldn't see ghosts. It is surreal. "Whether my inner hollow has become a threat - or whether I've been warped by Aizen's... whatever it was, the hypnosis thing, to be a weapon that would stab them in the back."  
"The hypnosis you don't have to worry about. Aizen couldn't use it."  
"Huh?" He is startled, both by the information and by the depth of his dad's knowledge.  
"Urahara planted a kido on the Hongyoku that blocked Kyoka Suigetsu's powers. Aizen wasn't able to use his sword's illusions after he took it from Rukia." Ichigo blinks, trying to absorb the new information, Isshin continues. "You probably don't have to worry too much about them being hard on you, though. Ukitake-soutaichou is more inclined to be generous than old man Yamamoto was."  
"Wait -" He searches his brain for the name. "Ukitake? Was he the white haired guy - Rukia's captain? When did he take over for gramps?"  
Isshin's face is entirely in shadow. "Yamamoto-soutaichou died early on in the war."  
_Died. _The word rings in his ears, not fully registering, like a foreign word that he can't quite remember the definition of. "Died? He's - dead? But -"  
His dad doesn't look at him. Ichigo tries to breathe, restart his brain. "Dad." His father's face is still bowed in the shadows. "Who. Else. Is. Dead." Isshin coughs, covers his face. "Dad. I'm going to be dragged back to Soul Society tomorrow. I have to know -" He stutters, chokes. "I have to know who's not going to be there."  
Isshin sighs, pulls a cigarette from his pocket, lights it, and takes a long drag. In the glow of the lit match, Ichigo can see his father's fingers shaking. Holding the cigarette, he starts. "Sasakibe - he's been Yamamoto's vice captain since the beginning. Omaeda - Soi-Fon's vice captain. Big guy." He raises the cigarette to his mouth again, breathes, then continues. "Iba - He was Komamura's vice captain. Always wore sunglasses. I didn't know him well, but - " He coughs. "Hitsugaya. He was the captain of the tenth. New guy - young, a real prodigy." This is the first name Ichigo recognizes - he remembers the white haired kid, sitting on the windowsill of his room, looking annoyed. Dead? He opens his mouth, sees the look on Isshin's face, the way his eyes are fixed on the pavement like he's seeing something very different than what Ichigo is seeing, and shuts it. "Kenpachi- you knew him, he was the captain of the eleventh, always wore bells in his hair - and his vice captain, Yachiru. Little pink haired girl, always chasing people around for cookies."  
Ichigo doesn't realize until he hears footsteps stop that he has sat down abruptly on the curb. "Ichigo?" He hears his father ask, distantly. He's busy remembering.  
_The giant, terrifying grin and ragged huge figure blocking Nnoitra's attack in Hueco Mundo. Practically a force of nature. Dead? It couldn't happen. _  
_And the girl - smaller than Yuzu or Karin, cheerfully exhorting him to come play with Kenny again. Carrying Kenpachi over her shoulder. He couldn't even picture her _fighting.  
He feels like he's been punched in the gut.  
"Ichigo? Are you alright?" His dad is looking at him for the first time since he started. He takes a deep, shaking, breath, and looks down at the pavement.  
"Who killed them?"  
"It's not -"  
He looks up, meets his father's eyes. "Dad. I need to know."  
Isshin turns his head, looks away. "I wasn't there, but I heard," he sighs "I heard it was Ulquiorra."  
Ichigo lets out a long breath, sinks his head into his knees, hands knotted in his hair, and starts to laugh, hollowly.  
_"Kill me."_  
_"I won't do it!"_  
"Ishida was right." He mutters to himself.  
"Ichigo?"  
He looks up at his father with eyes as dead as Kenpachi's. "I had a chance to kill Ulquiorra, but I didn't. I didn't. I was too _concerned _with making it a_ fair fight._" He spits Ishida's words out bitterly, hating himself. "If I had - it just would have taken one move - one little swipe - they -"  
"Ichigo." Isshin is gripping his shoulder firmly. "You can't blame your -"  
"Who else?"  
"Ichigo -"  
His face is like stone. "Who else is dead?"  
His dad sighs. "Kurotsuchi-taichou - but from the way you hear people talk he had it coming." He snorts, then breathes heavily. "Rose, Love, and Hiyori - you knew them, they were vizards. Hachigen, too, along with Tessai, Urahara's assistant - he used to be head of the Kido corps, when -"  
Instead of too few faces, there's too many - the sunglasses and spiky afro, the long blonde hair, the freckles, pigtails and scowl. The round faced, gentle man, who had been so kind to Orihime. The face on top of him after he had fallen in the rain, when Rukia had been taken away -  
"And," Isshin raises the cigarette to his mouth, inhales deeply. "Shinji, Unohana, and Kyoraku were killed taking down Aizen."  
_Shinji?_  
- _the blonde kid with the stupid grin, writing his name backwards, in their classroom, just like one of _them.  
He feels his fingers grinding into his knees, and forces himself to breathe.  
He hadn't recognized the other two names that Isshin said, but he immediately clamps down on his questions when he sees the look on his father's face. He stands up and puts a hand on the shoulder above him.  
Immediately his dad turns around and claps him sharply on the shoulder with both hands, goofy grin on his face again. "Ah, kids should never worry about their parents' concerns! Youth is a time for rebellion and wild carousing! Why, when I was your age -"  
Ichigo steps away, turns around and continues to stride down the sidewalk, tuning out his dad's monologue.  
It is a few blocks down when Isshin catches up with him, walking by his shoulder in the light from the streetlamps.  
When he speaks, it is much more quietly. "You haven't asked me how I know all this about the shinigami."  
Ichigo pauses, then shrugs. "That's your business. You don't have to tell me."  
Isshin laughs, but it sounds strained, nothing like his usual belly laughs. "It _is _your business. Really, I should have told you a long time ago. Ryuuken always tells me I'm a terrible parent..."  
"Dad?"  
He looks up, meets Ichigo's eyes. "I used to be a shinigami. Well, I still am now, really, just part time. Aizen was a very compelling factor in ending my retirement." He sighs. "I should have told you. If you had known more... but I just thought it would be good to let my only son make his own mistakes..." He shakes his head. "I'm so-"  
Ichigo cuts him off. "Well, that's good." His father looks surprised, Ichigo takes a deep breath and continues. "I was worried about Yuzu and Karin, with the war in Karakura. It's good that there was someone else around to protect them other than Kon. I mean, a guy can only do so much, and it would be _my _body he's breaking."  
His dad laughs, properly this time. "They had more than Kon - your friends, Tatsuki, Keigo and Mizuro practically lived at our house the whole time. They formed their own little Hollow fighting coalition, with those two from Urahara's - Jinta and Ururu? Even my dear, precious daughter," Isshin begins to weep. "Karin put herself in danger and joined them."  
"Wait -" He interrupts his dad's sobbing. "They were fighting hollows? They don't even -"  
"Urahara helped arm them, gave them some training. Yoruichi too, and a couple other shinigami."  
He has a sudden mental image of Tatsuki, a diabolical grin on her face, blasting him into next Tuesday with a gigantic cannon hoisted over her shoulder, and shudders. An armed and dangerous (Well, more than she was always dangerous) Tatsuki was _not _something he wanted to be facing after their last, er, little argument.  
"Urahara told them everything." Isshin continues, smiling gently. "They took it reasonably well, if that's why you're worried."  
He is relieved for a moment, and then notices the wording. "Um... define 'reasonably well'."  
"Well, now that you mention it, Tatsuki did spend some time punching things in our house, and muttering. And there was the way she would always glare at the door of your bedroom..."  
"Oh, god." He puts his head in his hands. "I'm going to die, aren't I?"  
His dad claps him on the shoulder. "Do not fear, my son! You must be a man, and face your impending doom with courage and dignity! Do not flinch in the face of destruction!"  
"... Maybe Orihime will be able to protect me." Ichigo mutters.

They finally arrive home.  
Ichigo opens the door to his sisters' bedroom, checking to see that they are still soundly asleep. He sees light reflect off two pairs of open eyes, which quickly shut. He smiles. "Goodnight, guys."  
He gets back to his own room, flops down on the bed.  
He stares at the ceiling for another half an hour before he yanks the blanket off the bed and moves to sleep on the floor.  
It is so quiet.

**AN: Okay, if I just revealed that a favorite character of yours was killed off screen, I am genuinely sorry. I do think realistically that more shinigami would have died in the battle against Aizen, but I don't like doing a lot of information dump, especially with such important information. I do hope to show some more detail on many of these in the companion piece with Orihime and Tatsuki, and if they don't show up there I will try to write them as separate one shots if at all possible.**


	18. Small Victories

**AN: Hey guys – thanks as always for your reviews and thoughts. I hope you continue to enjoy this story!**

When he wakes up in the morning, his phone is buzzing.  
He reads the text on it and shivers.  
_Meet me at the dojo at 7. AT_  
He breathes deeply. _Maybe she just wants to talk. _He remembers his head smashing through the school window. _Maybe not. _  
When he walks into the dojo, Tatsuki is warming up, already in her karate gi. She spares him the briefest of glances before returning to her routine.  
Cautiously, he tries to slip into warm up as well, struggling to remember the various steps. _Has it really been this long since I practiced karate? _  
Tatsuki rises, eyes closed and face impassive, from her stretching ten minutes later, and strides off to the storage room. Ichigo hovers nervously around the edges of the mats until she comes out and hurls pads and a helmet at him. "Put those on."  
He wraps the velcro straps around his legs, feeling out of place. When was the last time he had done anything but step out of his own body for a fight?  
When he stands up, Tatsuki waves him on to the mat. "Just a sparring match, alright? No shinigami stuff. Just straight up."  
He nods, taking it as the order it was intended to be.  
Tatsuki steps into a fighting stance, and Ichigo mirrors her, feeling almost naked without his sword.  
He lets the first punch hit him, only to be slammed by a kick from behind. "Don't you dare go easy on me, Kurosaki Ichigo!" He hears her yell, and any trace of calm has been stripped away from her eyes, and he realizes that this isn't a sparring match, whatever she said. This is a test.  
He steps quickly, his training coming to his aid, to dodge the next blow, only to be hammered from a second one coming before he could catch it. _What? _  
_I should be faster than her, even in my body. Why-? _He steps back from another blow and returns with a clumsy kick, karate form forgotten. Tatsuki catches it and spins him off balance, he barely steadies himself. "I trained in karate for years after you stopped, Ichigo." she says in a low voice. "I've fought the goddess of flash and the second division captain of the gotei thirteen. So don't you _dare," _she continues, voice rising. "Treat me like I need to be _protected!"_  
He looks her dead in the eye, and sees steely determination, fury simmering. He straightens up, watching Tatsuki carefully, trying to gauge her next move.  
_(It is so different from trying to read Uryu.)_  
He dodges the next one two combo of blows and makes his first contact on his return. They trade evenly matched, lightning quick blows, circling the mat. Then Tatsuki looks up at something, and he darts in, seizing the opening.  
_Wham._  
His head is ringing, he tries to strike back as he steps away, but she quickly seizes the advantage, hammering him again from the other side before he can even see her, and as he stumbles he feels his legs being swept out from under him.  
He hits the mat.  
"Are you alright, Kurosaki-kun?"  
He looks up, still dizzy, "Hey, Orihime," he replies, seeing her in the doorway. "I'm good."  
"He'll be fine, he's just gotten out of practice." Tatsuki adds dismissively.  
She smiles. "I, uh, just wanted to come and get you for school. I didn't know if you might have lost track of time."  
"Thanks, Orihime," Tatsuki's face is the polar opposite of what it had been just moments ago. "Do you think you could grab my stuff? It's just in the locker room."  
Orihime looks a little surprised, but smiles pleasantly enough. "Of course, Tatsuki-chan!"  
When she's left the room, Ichigo starts to haul himself off the mat. "Well," He tells Tatsuki, removing his helmet. "I guess I deserved that."  
"No you deserve _this._" _Wham. _  
Tatsuki straightens up from her attack pose. "The fight was just to remind you that you _can _trust me. _That _was because you _didn't, _idiot."  
He rubs the impact site on his cheek. "I'm going to go change," She says crisply, "Put the pads in the back room when you're done."  
She strolls towards the door. "Tatsuki, wait," She looks back at him, eyebrows raised. "I am sorry."  
"I know, idiot." She tells him, an edge of a smile on her face.

Uryu leaves his apartment early.  
He can feel himself slipping into the zone beyond tiredness, where his body has realized that sleep is not going to happen and resumes a semblance of normality. He feels unusually cheerful, a product of his tiredness, and his fingers quiver and tremble  
He slides the packages containing the two newly finished commissions into the outgoing box of the mail. The payment he would receive when he emailed the confirmation of their shipment would help to tide over his payments on the apartment, but it wouldn't be enough to get back his water or electricity.

He drops into the small clothing shop, and leaves shortly after with pages of designs, ready to be sewn and sold, and heads for school. Somehow, by the time he gets there, he has become engulfed in a shifting herd of Ichigo, Sado, Mizuro, Keigo, Tatsuki, and Orihime. He lets the conversation wash over him, Keigo reminding Ichigo of some movie he had promised to go see, Ichigo insisting that Sado stay over at his house, because apparently he had slept on a _roof_ the past night, Orihime telling stories of the shapes in the clouds. He notices the bruise on Ichigo's face and Tatsuki's faint, satisfied smile distantly, only picking up when he hears her command; "Oh yeah, everyone? Orihime got evicted and the asshole landlord sold off her stuff, so we're going to go buy it back, and we need you lot to help us carry it. Meet us right here after school, got it?" She finishes, with a glare that promised doom on naysayers.  
"Tatsuki-chan," Orihime replies, gently, and Tatsuki's face softens a bit. The rest of the group expresses sympathy, Keigo the loudest, trying to embrace Orihime in a comforting hug, earning him a kick from Tatsuki before Mizuro could pull him away to safety, and really, between the bickering and the yelling and Keigo's dramatics and Orihime's cheer and being gently jostled by others' shoulders and not minding, there's a feeling, a sense of something that doesn't really fit within his frame of experience. (He must be really exhausted, he thinks. He's never at a loss for words like this.)  
_Eating together with Orihime and Sado in Soul Society, fighting alongside Renji in the corridors of Las Noches, Ichigo, offering him a hand to lift himself up from the floor of the arena -_  
He shakes his head.  
_Whatever_ the feeling was, it vanishes very quickly when they entered the classroom.  
"_So._"  
The lights seemed to dim and flicker. Uryu resists the irritatingly irrational urge to duck and hide behind Sado.  
Their teacher was _smiling _at them.  
He had never realized how much she could look like a tiger.  
Keigo, he notes, has _not _resisted the urge to hide, and he can hear him muttering. "Ohshitohshit..."  
A book flies through the air and thwacks Keigo on the shoulder. "You three," She points at Keigo, Mizuro, and Tatsuki. "Sit." She jabs a vehement finger at the rows of desks.  
"Y-yes, Ochi-sensei." Keigo stutters out. Mizuro just smiles his enigmatic smile, Tatsuki squeezes Orihime's shoulder and slouches into a seat.  
"Now," She turns back to them, and the temperature seems to plummet. "_you _four."  
Ichigo has thrown back his shoulders and tilted his head confidently, Sado maintains a completely impassive, and Uryu forces his best expression of polite interest. Of the four of them, Orihime is the only one who has the courtesy to look embarrassed.  
"Bad enough that _those three,_" she fixes a glare on the seated trio, and Keigo shrinks. "Ran out of half their classes the past three weeks. More than half!" She snorts like an angry bull. "But _you four _have been _gone_ all. that. time. Just up and vanished! Poof! _No_ regard for your education. And two of my top students to boot!" She waves her hand at Uryu and Orihime. "_And _you, _Kurosaki-kun._" She pokes a finger at him. "You're gone for a month and then, the second you get back, you disappear again? _Well?_" She surveys the four of them. "What do you have to say for yourselves?"  
Uryu looks at Ichigo.  
Ichigo looks back at Uryu.  
Uryu raises his eyebrows. _Do you have a story?_  
Ichigo somehow manages the trick of raising his eyebrows while scowling. _What the hell? Of course I don't. I thought you had one. _  
Uryu rolls his eyes and then closes them, pushing his glasses up his nose. _Do I have to prepare for _everything, _Kurosaki?_  
Ichigo glances over at Ochi-sensei and back at Uryu, raising his eyebrows again and folding his arms. _Well, you better come up with something quick, or we're toast. _  
Uryu leans his head forward, eyebrows practically disappearing into his hair. _What? Why on earth should it be _me_? _You_'re the one always -_  
Somewhere in the middle of this, Orihime breaks down into sobs.  
They both whip around, looking at her. Uryu starts to move to go over and calm her down, afraid until he sees that Tatsuki hasn't moved from her seat. That's when he realizes that Orihime's face is totally dry.  
Orihime wipes nonexistant tears away from her eyes. "I'm so-sorry, Ochi-sensei. Th-they were gone because of me. I'm always so clumsy, you know me - and I got h-hit by a car." She sniffles. "It was _awful -_ the doctors told me I nearly didn't - didn't make it." She ducks her head, hiding the lack of tears. "Kurosaki-kun, and Ishida-kun and Yasutora-kun st-stayed to help me get back on my feet. Because," She stutters, as though on the verge of tears. "Because I don't really have any family to take care of me, you see." She hiccups, tries to smile, and then breaks down into full-throated sobbing again.  
"Oh, dear, Inoue-chan," Ochi-sensei moves around the desk to pat Orihime on the shoulder. "Um, don't cry."  
Uryu blinks. _Why is it when I tell that story I sound like an idiot, but when she tells it even _I _want to give her a hug, and I _know_ it's not true?_  
"You three," She straightens up and gestures. "Are very loyal friends. I'm very proud. You too," She waves at the seated trio. "Going to visit your injured friend in the hospital - so generous. But," she shifts back towards the four at the desk. "This doesn't mean I'm letting you off your make up work!"

Uryu thinks his spine might collapse.  
He's carrying what feels like a mountain of worksheets and textbooks. He feels even worse for Ichigo, who has twice the load he does.  
"Hurry up guys!" Tatsuki calls back to them.  
Right. Helping Orihime.  
When they finally arrive at the dusty second hand store that Orihime's possessions have been sold to, a scruffy looking older gentleman with round glasses scurries in to the room. "Can I help y - oh." When he catches sight of Ichigo and Sado, he bows deeply. "Kurosaki-kun and Yasutora-kun - how excellent, really excellent to see you again. Anything in the shop, anything you want, free!"  
"Er, thanks?" Uryu can see that Ichigo is completely nonplussed. _He really does have no memory for faces._  
"Oh," The shopkeeper looks a little disappointed. "Kurosaki-kun doesn't remember me. That's quite alright, it was some time ago. You and Yasutora-kun stopped a group of thugs from smashing up my shop, about a year ago. I," He continues. "Cannot thank you enough - you saved my livelihood!"  
Ichigo looks at Sado, then back at the shopkeeper. "Oh, you're _that _guy. Okay. Um, well." He points at Orihime. "Our friend's stuff got sold here a while ago, and she'd like it back, so -"  
Tatsuki cuts in. "They would have been sold to you by Yagami, two weeks ago. Do you remember anything like that?"  
"Yes, I think -" And he disappears into the shop.

A half an hour later, they find themselves out on the sidewalk, Orihime watery-eyed with real tears on having been reunited with her stuffed animals, Ichigo and Uryu struggling to carry a couch while Sado lifts the bed over his head without any obvious signs of effort.  
"Slow down, Kurosaki,"  
"Hey, I'm the one that has to walk backwards,"  
"Yes, and if you don't want me to accidentally ram this into you, you have to _slow down."_  
"Why don't you just walk faster?  
"It's not that -"  
"Hey guys," Renji says, stepping out of the air.  
"Looks like you need our help _again."_ Rukia adds, smirking.

**AN: For those of you who are thinking 'Oh, come on, there's no way Tatsuki would ever be able to beat Ichigo in combat' – here's how I thought of it: Ichigo hasn't been practicing karate for years now, all of his combat has been with a sword and with various magical elements to the attacks, which would be a completely different style of fighting and would change your reflexes. Tatsuki has been focused almost entirely on karate until very recently. She also has the advantage of having trained recently with hand to hand combat masters, focused on speed, while Ichigo is still recovering from weeks of poor condition. Also, Tatsuki is awesome. That is all. **

**And for those of you who are wondering what happened when Ishida visited the clothing shop (because that is **_**obviously **_**the logical response to this chapter) there is a short scene that I wrote and cut, that I will post in a separate story for various one shots set in this universe. **

**Anyway, sorry for the long AN, hope you guys enjoyed!**


	19. A Sort of Homecoming

**AN: Thank you so much to all of my reviewers! You guys are wonderful – I'm so glad my little one shot got such a positive response. Thanks particularly to Gemini24 – I really hope you get an account sometime so I can reply to your wonderful reviews!**

Between the nine of them, they managed to get all of Orihime's stuff clumsily into Tatsuki's house. Uryu wondered how it must have looked to people passing on the street, with one end of the bed apparently floating unsuspended in midair.  
Looking now at the sofa, bed, dresser, and assorted other knicknacks which were _not_ floating in midair, but cluttering up the anteroom of Tatsuki's house, he thought about telling her that she hadn't really thought this through. Then he remembered the purple bruise on Ichigo's face and abruptly changed his mind.  
"Oh dear," Orihime murmurs.  
Tatsuki grins at her. "It's alright, I'll move it all into our closets until you find a new place. It's not a problem."  
Uryu was k of whether most of the furniture would fit into a closet, but kept his mouth shut. Looking more closely at the two shinigami who had joined them, he noticed they were wearing white over their shihakusho's.  
Apparently Ichigo had noticed too. "Hey, Rukia, you guys are wearing - those things. Aren't those captain things, or something?"  
Rukia beams at him. "Yes - I'm captain of the thirteenth division now, and Renji's taken over the fifth. Which means," She adds, thwapping him lightly upside the head. "You should be addressing me as Kuchiki-taichou."  
"Yep, there are two of them now," Renji says in response to the expression on Ichigo's face, one arm slung across Rukia's shoulders. "Ever since Ukitake-taichou had to take over the first, Rukia's been helping out with thirteenth, and they decided to make it official just yesterday."  
"But - you - bankai?" Ichigo stutters out.  
"She did!" Right now, much to Uryu's surprise, Renji looks like an excited fan at a rock concert. (Or, well, what he imagines one would look like, if he ever went to rock concerts.) "It's _so cool _- I mean literally, there's this field of ice - and oh man, it's _so awesome. _You should have seen her when we were -"  
Rukia thumps Renji in the shoulder. "Hey, don't sell yourself short. You helped me train so I could develop my bankai in the first place -"  
"But you were one who _did _it and it's awesome -"  
"I wouldn't even have made it to do it if you hadn't saved me that one time, you know -"  
"That was nothing, before you showed up with that one, you know, with the weird horns, I _totally _thought I was dead -"  
The door creaks open behind them. "Um, hello?" Tatsuki's mother cautiously pokes her head in.  
"Oh!" Tatsuki suddenly jumps over the couch to steer her mom away. "Sorry mom, my friends dropped in and we just had to pick up Orihime's stuff because she lost it, you know when she got evicted like I told you and we were just leaving so I'll see you at dinner bye!" With that, she drags them all out the door.  
Uryu blinks at the sudden change in scenery, and hears Rukia from behind him. "Well, that was entertaining." She brushes dust off of the sleeve of her shihakusho, reminding Uryu that she is, as always, a Kuchiki. "But we do have work to do that _doesn't_ involve lifting furniture, correct?" She glances at Renji.  
"Oh yeah, we're supposed to pick you guys up to drop by Soul Society. Ukitake-tai - Ukitake-soutaichou wanted to talk to you. It's no big deal!" He adds, palms up, reassuring them, then looks over at Rukia. "Hey, Rukia, do you think when they're done, we could...?"  
"Well, the way you've talked it up, I'm not sure they'll even be impressed when they actually see it."  
"C'mon, of course they will - right guys?" Renji looks at them eagerly.  
"Um," Ichigo responds. "I think I missed something here..."  
Rukia thwacks him upside the head. "My _bankai_, fool."  
"We would be honored," Uryu says smoothly. "Please forgive Kurosaki his foolishness, Kuchiki-taichou."  
"Oh, come on, there's no way you knew what they were talking about." Ichigo scoffs.  
"It was obvious, you're the only one that was clueless enough..."  
"Bullshit!"  
"Language, Kurosaki."  
"Hey, don't you tell _me _about language, I've heard you swear like a drunk sailor."  
"That was under _completely different_ circumstances."  
"Oh, like losing part of your sewing ki -"  
It's at about this point that they both realize _everyone is staring at them. _Uryu is annoyed to find that he had lost all awareness that anyone else was there.  
"What?" Ichigo asks belligerently, straightening up and staring back.  
There is a moment of silence, then Rukia chuckles, followed by Renji guffawing. Even Tatsuki snorts. There's a faint smile on Mizuro's face, though Keigo looks confused. It is the low laugh from Sado that cracks the group's completely, and they all break down.  
Breathing heavily, Rukia shakes her head and says, grinning. "It's good to have you all back."  
Orihime is still gasping out giggles, leaning against Tatsuki's shoulder, when something beeps. Rukia pulls out a small device from her shihakusho and looks at it. "We should go, if we don't want Soi-fon-taichou thinking we've defected. Urahara and Isshin are already at the Senkaimon."  
"Dad?" Ichigo starts, surprised, as they begin to walk away, down the sidewalk. "What do they want with him?"  
"Ukitake-soutaichou wants to ask all those shinigami who are former captains if they would be willing to resume their position. He already put all of us who have developed bankai - Ikkaku, Hisagi, Renji, and me - in captain's positions yesterday, he returned Kensei to his position in the ninth, with Mashiro, Yoruichi's taken over the tenth, and he allowed Lisa to take over the eighth too. But," Rukia continues, responding to Ichigo's worried look "I know he doesn't expect Isshin to say yes, because everyone is assuming that Isane-fukataichou will take over the fourth, even if she doesn't have a bankai. And he knows that the Kurosaki family has obligations in the living world - it's just a courtesy request, really."  
"Yeah, okay." Ichigo replies, still looking a little rattled. Uryu lets the information sink in, slowly calculating the cost of the war for Soul Society, and thinks, bitterly, how happy his younger self would have been at the suffering of the shinigami. "Hey," Ichigo adds, looking over at Mizuro, Keigo, and Tatsuki. "Um, since my dad and I are going to be gone - would you mind looking in on my sisters for us?"  
The trio shares a momentary worried glance, which seems strangely out of place to Uryu, before Tatsuki shakes her head slightly and looks away. Mizuro responds with a polite, "Of course, Ichigo," cutting off Keigo's "Aw, but I wanted -" before dragging the taller boy off down the sidewalk.  
Uryu notices Orihime's fingers clasped around Tatsuki's sleeve before the karate champion folds her arms and shakes her head. "I'll come with you guys. Miz and Keigo've got Yuzu-chan and Karin-kun under control."  
"Yeah, cool," Ichigo says, and Uryu almost smirks at how he has slouched under her stony expression. He catches, out of the corner of his ear, Orihime's whispered "Thank you," to Tatsuki, and watches how the taller girl's face melts into a smile. He looks away, trying not to stare, and sees the sign for Urahara's.  
"Oy," He looks down to see a redheaded boy looking up at Ichigo. "You're late. Everyone's already downstairs." A dark haired girl is peering around the door, but shrinks away as they approach.  
They lift up the trapdoor and file down the ladder, past the grey, pitted walls.  
_cratered, stoney ceiling_  
_"Do not lie to me, _girl_" bone blade blood bleeding -_  
_- "You think he hadn't been waiting for a chance -" "Getsuga Tenshou!" Makeitstopmakeitstop -_  
"Uryu?"  
It's not until he hears the question that he realizes that fear has frozen his hands to the rungs of the ladder. He takes a deep breath, feeling his heart pound. "I'm fine, Kurosaki,"  
"Good, 'cause you're holding up the line." He sounds perfectly like himself, but when he looks down to smile tightly, reassuringly, at Uryu, he can see the tremor in Ichigo's hands.  
A cheery voice rings out as they reach the bottom of the ladder. "Well well, the gang's all here." Urahara claps his hands. "Is everyone ready to go?"  
"Not quite," Uryu turns around to see Rukia pull on a glove and smack Ichigo upside the head. For a second, it is like double vision until Ichigo steps fully out in his shihakusho. "Ow, dammit, Rukia, did you really need to do it that hard?"  
She just smirks.

"Itsy-gooooooo!"  
A white bone mask hurtles towards him, and he feels his body switch into overdrive, hand flexing back to grab his sword -  
- only to meet firm resistance, he is paralyzed -  
- but there is a gold shield in front of them, the figure is thrown backwards, green hair sailing.  
"Ow, Itsygo."  
Nel.  
What is it with people and trying to tackle him lately? He wonders, feeling chagrined as he sees Chad's large hands unclasp from his and Uryu's arms. Uryu looks down at his bare wrist, biting his lip, and Ichigo's stomach squirms as he realizes that Uryu had forgotten, just for a moment, that he had lost his powers.  
Orihime is shaking, sweat dripping down her forehead, eyes wide. Tatsuki plants both hands on her shoulders and leans over her, murmuring.  
"Oh god, I'm so sorry," Ichigo hears Rukia say, from the other side of the crushing hug Nel has enveloped him in. "I didn't think -"  
"It's alright, we're fine." Uryu replies, calmly, and he thinks for a moment. _No, we're not fine. _  
_We might never be fine. _The crushing though almost makes him miss Uryu's last words. "It's not your fault."  
"I'm sorry," Orihime says in a small voice, he can almost hear her trying to pull herself back to cheerfulness. "It's good to see you again, Ne -!"  
Eyes big and watery, Nel lets go of Ichigo and flings her arms around Orihime. "I'm so glad you're safe!"  
"Mgh mh mh," is all he hears out of Orihime from behind Nel's embrace. When she loosens her grip, Orihime manages to choke out "We're glad you're okay too! We didn't know what happened to you!"  
When Nel stands up, he asks, confused at the sight of the arrancar in a shihakusho, "What are you doing here? Where are -" He struggles for names. "Your friends?"  
Nel nods enthusiastically. "Pesche and Dondochakka are here too!"  
"Nii-sama named her his assistant captain yesterday, so the two of them became members of sixth squad." Rukia explains, smiling.  
"Wait - _Byakuya?_" Ichigo exclaims, "We are talking about the same guy here, right? Tall, black hair, always wears a scarf, and more of a stick in the mud than Uryu?" He ignores the sputtered "What? I'm no -" "Totally obsessed with rules and tradition? _He_" Ichigo leans forward for emphasis. "took an _arrancar _ as his assistant captain? I mean," He adds, looking at Nel, "Not that it's not great, but _Byakuya?"_  
"Har har," Rukia replies, arms folded. "Joke all you want, but my brother is very practical, and Neliel-fukataichou has proven her worth many times over."  
_Snap_.  
Urahara closes a fan none of them had even realized he was carrying. "Not that this isn't all touching, but we do have places to be, people to see?"  
"Aw, Urahara, relax. Let the kids enjoy the beautiful company." Isshin winks at Nel, who blushes.  
(Ichigo can feel his brain break a little.)  
"You do remember that the 'beautiful company' could kick your ass into next week?" He distantly hears Tatsuki mutter, but Isshin ignores the jibe.  
"Agh." Ichigo splutters, coming out of his horrified trance, and everyone looks at him. "I mean, ah, no, Urahara's right, we should get going. It's great to see you," He says to Nel. "But we don't want to keep Ukitake waiting any longer. Right?"  
With that, he takes two strides away, and then stops. "Er, which way are we going?"

"Hey, Berry-tan's finally here!" In the distance, Ichigo sees the green haired vizard leap up from her perch on the wall and wave. "Hurry up, everyone's waiting!" When they get closer, she ushers him up to the big doors, pushing him through. "Go on, go on."  
He stumbles in, and the rest of the group follows him. Ukitake is at the head of the room, and he sees the ninja woman standing nearby. Yoruichi, at the side of the room, grins and winks at him, and he sees Ikkaku nod. He recognizes Lisa and Kensei, as Rukia and Renji step into line, and then he sees who Renji is standing next to.  
He has to stop himself from visibly reacting. One of Byakuya's sleeves hangs empty, his sword arm gone. His remaining hand is clasped tightly around a cane.  
Noticing his gaze, the shinigami captain looks up, and Ichigo has to force himself to smirk confidently, like nothing's changed.  
"Well," Ichigo looks up, glad of the distraction, at Ukitake. "It is good to see you all here and well. I would like to speak to all of you, but if I may, I must to address the most pressing matter first." He bows to Urahara and Isshin. "Urahara-san, I know that we have not had time to fully discuss this, but the remaining captains have already voted that they would be willing to accept you as captain again. I must ask you to take up your previous position, if you are willing."  
There is a lengthy, weighted pause, in which Urahara's face is totally blank. Then he laughs. "Oh, it'll be good to be back." He says, reaching up and adjusting his hat.  
"Thank you, Urahara-taichou." Ukitake bows, and Urahara returns the gesture, before walking to a position in the line where a dark haired girl stands back from the others, head lowered. Out of the corner of his eyes, Ichigo catches Uryu forcing down a thin smile at the empty space in the floor.  
"Isshin, I must ask as well -" and Ichigo moves his attention back to the center of the room.  
His dad laughs. "If you're going to ask me to come back and be a captain, the answer's no, Ukitake, as you know well."  
Ukitake looks at him, and smiles. "I did have to ask. Then," He looks out at the room. "Who here votes for Isane-fukataichou to take the position as fourth division captain?" Hands raise across the room, Ichigo doesn't bother counting whose, and the silver haired shinigami who had healed Uryu in Las Noches steps forward to join the line. "Excellent. That's settled. Now," He looks down at Ichigo, Uryu and Orihime. "I would like to speak individually with each of you, if that is acceptable. Inoue-san, if you would be willing to come first?"  
The other captains file out, and Ukitake stands up, walking down towards Orihime. Only then does Ichigo notice that he now has a limp.  
Orihime takes a few tentative steps forward, Tatsuki at her shoulder. Ukitake tilts his head very slightly in query, but Tatsuki looks him square in the face and doesn't budge.  
It almost makes Ichigo laugh, the sight of the petite karate champ and the head of the Gotei Thirteen in a staring match - or, at least, it would have if the bruise on his cheek wasn't still stinging.  
Ukitake smiles, and waves the two of them forward. As they exit the room, Rukia and Renji walk over to Ichigo. "So, do you want to see that demonstration?" Renji asks him, practically bouncing.  
Ichigo glances at the door that has just closed behind Orihime. "Yeah, sure."


	20. Fangs and Ice

**AN: Thanks as always to my lovely reviewers! All credit for the design of Rukia's bankai goes to my good friend and editor Ryaku. Enjoy!**

They settle in at the edge of a large open space near the center of the seireitei compound. Other duos are sparring near the edges, but they scoot back as Renji and Rukia approach. They walk to either end of the arena.  
"Weren't we just seeing _Rukia's _bankai?" Ichigo asks Renji.  
The redheaded shinigami smiles like a snake. "It's not interesting if she's got nothing to fight."  
The two opponents bow, and Ichigo hears scuffling feet from behind him. Ikkaku and Yumichika have wandered over to watch the match. Several sparring pairs have broken apart and turned to watch as well.  
"Bankai! Hihio Zabimaru!"  
"Bankai! Roiyaru Sode no Shirayuki!"  
As the giant … furry... bone... snake... thing … (What on earth was Renji's bankai supposed to be anyway? He actually hasn't seen it before.) erupts from Renji's side of the ring, Ichigo looks around to try and find where Rukia's bankai is, thinking for a moment that this might just be a bizarre prank being played.  
Uryu mutters in his ear, "Look _down, _Kurosaki."  
That's when he notices that Rukia's half of the arena is gleaming with reflected light, and, as Renji launches his bankai forward, a spire of ice leaps upward, slamming into the creature's skull. It hurls itself back downwards, around the spire, while smaller icicles rush upward, knocking the joints apart. As Renji calls the pieces back together, ice advances across the arena.  
"Pretty useful, isn't it?" Ikkaku comments.  
"Yeah," Ichigo replies, impressed, as Rukia's ice field freezes two of Hihio Zabimaru's segments.  
"She spent a lot of time on that, training with Renji and Kuchiki-taichou." Ikkaku observes "Determined girl, that Rukia."  
A storm of icicles hurtles towards Renji, forcing him to bring back the tail of Hihio Zabimaru to defend himself, abandoning the segments frozen on Rukia's icefield. Yumichika sighs. "Such a beautiful way to fight."  
"Eh, she still needs practice." Ikkaku adds lightly, as the bone tail easily shatters the icicles, and the fangs of Hihio Zabimaru hurtle towards Rukia. She throws icicles up in front of herself, but each one fractures and crumbles.  
Renji steps forward, guiding the head as Rukia struggles.  
"Oh, he fell for it _again._" Yumichika comments, sounding disappointed.  
"What?" But then he looks more closely and sees ice creeping up Renji's legs.  
The battlefield lapses into stillness, Renji frozen in place by the pillar of ice, Rukia pinned by Hihio Zabimaru's head. Then laughter rings out as the ice melts away and the bone snake dissolves.  
"That was awesome!" Renji shun-po's across the arena and pulls Rukia up from the ground, spinning her in a circle and planting a kiss on her forehead.  
"You say that as if you're surprised," She mutters cooly, but her face is flushed and she is smiling. When he sets her down, she brushes off the front of her shihakusho and adds. "You dope, you got me all wet."  
"Hey, it's your ice,"  
As they bicker, Ichigo turns around to Ikkaku. "So is this," He waves his arm at the pair in the center of the arena. "a _thing_ now?"  
"Yep. Has been for a while. I made a lot of money off that bet."  
Uryu splutters from next to him. "You have a _betting pool _for -" He stutters and flails his arm vaguely in the direction of Rukia and Renji.  
"Well, you gotta keep it interesting, you know. This guy," He jerks a thumb at Ichigo, "Is still up for bets, if you want to get in on the action. Unless," he adds, looking at Ichigo, "You got together with Orihime-chan while you were gone and haven't told us?"  
"What?" From the expression Ikkaku is wearing, his face must have just gone a particularly compelling shade of red. "No, nononono, nothing like - just no. It's not - not even - what are - dammit, guys."  
"Well, Masumoto will be disappointed." Ikkaku comments levelly, smirking,  
"Hm." Yumichika runs a hand through his hair. "'Hime-chan can do better."  
"Oh, thanks guys." He hears a low chuckle from behind him, and turns an accusatory finger on Uryu and Chad. "Don't either of you _dare_ laugh! For all you know they have ones for you too."  
"Well actually -" Ikkaku starts, but just then a small blonde haired girl runs up.  
"Ishida-san?"  
Uryu looks around at her. "Yes?"  
"Ukitake-soutaichou would like to see you. I can take you back."  
"Of course." He reaches up to push his glasses up his nose.  
As he moves to step away, Ichigo reaches out and claps him on the shoulder. "See you in a bit."  
He's rewarded by a thin smile. "Of course."

The office is high ceilinged and wood paneled, Uryu steps in cautiously.  
"Ishida-kun."  
He looks up at the occupied desk and bows. "Ukitake-soutaichou."  
The white-haired shinigami smiles and returns the bow. "Please, have a seat,"  
"Thank you." Uryu wraps a hand around the dark wood of the chair and settles in to the seat.  
"Now, I find myself in the unusual position of speaking with a Quincy for the first time in quite a while." Uryu finds his hand unconsciously rubbing his empty wrist, but he stays silent. There is no need for the shinigami to know he is powerless. "I take it by your presence that you bear no ill will to the shinigami?"  
Uryu forces himself to speak levelly. "The only shinigami to whom I bore ill will is now dead, so no, I bear no ill will to the Gotei Thirteen."  
There is a faint smile at the corner of Ukitake's mouth. "But, I take it, you have no loyalty to us either?"  
"My loyalties are with Kurosaki Ichigo." There. So simple, so obvious, he's known it since before invading soul society, that it falls off his lips without even realizing it, and yet it feels strange, finally putting it into words.  
Ukitake sits back, evidently having heard what he expected. "Of course. You'll forgive me, I do have to ask."  
"Of course." Uryu responds in kind.  
"Would you like some tea? I realize we dragged you out of the Living World rather unexpectedly, so you might not have had the opportunity to have an afternoon meal." Ukitake stands up from his desk, bringing back a tray laden with a teapot, cups, and a dish of ohagi. "I've been so busy all day, I haven't had enough time to relax and eat."  
"Thank you," replies Uryu as Ukitake hands him a hot cup of tea.  
"Do you take sugar?" He asks, proffering a bowl.  
"Oh, no," Uryu lies determinately.  
Ukitake tilts his head. "Are you sure? Kiyone, bless her, always makes it too strong for me."  
Somewhat sheepishly, Uryu takes two lumps. "Thank you,"  
"Of course." Ukitake settles into his chair with his own cup of tea, picking up one of the ohagi. "Now, I've heard a great deal about the circumstances of your imprisonment from Inoue-san, but I would like to hear the key points from your perspective, if it's not too much trouble?"  
He reaches up to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Where would you like me to start?"  
"Ah," Ukitake dunks three lumps of sugar into his tea and takes a careful sip. "If you could, perhaps, describe the events on top of the dome of Las Noches."  
Uryu tightens his fingers around the edge of the chair to keep them from shaking. "It's really very straightforward. I'm sure you got a very thorough synopsis from Inoue-san. But," He continues, before Ukitake can ask him to continue anyway. "What happened was very simple. I took Inoue-san up through the hole in Las Noches' dome. We both felt overwhelming reiatsu from the fight going on above. When we arrived, Ulquiorra blew a hole through Ichigo's chest."  
"So he was dead?" Ukitake asks.  
Uryu fiddles with the edge of his cuff. "Well, obviously, he _wasn't _dead, seeing as he's here now. But if a doctor had been there, I think they would have proclaimed him clinically dead, yes."  
"I see. And what did you do then?"  
"I tried to hold off Ulquiorra so that Orihime could heal Ichigo."  
"And you thought she'd be able to do this, even though you presumed him dead?"  
Uryu laughs, he can't help himself. "I would think by now the shinigami would have learned not to underestimate Kurosaki Ichigo's willpower."  
"Of course." Ukitake smiles. "And what happened to Kurosaki-san then?"  
Uryu reaches up, adjusts his glasses. "He - his body transformed. It became more like a full hollow."  
"So he put on his hollow mask?"  
"No - it wasn't like that at all. His whole body transformed, it-" _horns and claws and black black black eyes can't be Ichigo can't can't can't _"It wasn't anything like the mask."  
"I see." Ukitake doesn't press the distinction. "And what did Kurosaki-san do then?"  
"That wasn't Ichigo!"  
He is immediately ashamed of his outburst. His hands are shaking so badly that tea has spilled all over the table. "My - my apologies, Ukitake-soutaichou,"  
"It's no trouble." The shinigami reaches over with a cloth and wipes up the liquid. "More tea?"  
He gratefully accepts the refill, wrapping both hands tightly around the cup as he sips to still the tremors running through them.  
"Shall we continue?" Ukitake asks gently.  
"Yes, of course." Uryu takes another sip.  
"So what did - this hollow do? Attack Ulquiorra?"  
_The blade smashing into the ground, the rushing spiritual pressure, diving to pull Orihime back from the brink. _"Yes."  
"And he defeated him?"  
"Easily." Uryu takes an ohagi to have an excuse not to elaborate.  
"And what did he do then?"  
"It tried to cut of Ulquiorra's head."  
"But he didn't?"  
"I - I tried to stop him." He puts the teacup down to keep from spilling it again. "I thought Ulquiorra was dead, I thought there was no need to go any further. It was stupid, I should have thought of Ulquiorra's regeneration powers."  
"You were afraid of Kurosaki-san losing his humanity." Uryu nods, taking a bite of the ohagi to avoid speaking. "It's a noble motive, and one that need not be second guessed."  
Uryu snorts, and Ukitake looks at him questioningly. "Apparently _that thing_ didn't agree, because it stabbed me through the stomach."  
Ukitake takes a sip of tea. "So this hollow could no longer distinguish between friend and foe?"  
"No. It just," He gives a low, hollow laugh. "_defined _them differently." When Ukitake tilts his head querulously, Uryu continues. "He wanted to protect Orihime - that's all it was interested in. She was trying to make it stop." When he looks down at his hand, he sees that he has crushed the ohagi in a fist.  
"And did he?"  
"Well, we won't know now." He replies, an edge in his voice. "Ulquiorra attacked it then, so it couldn't finish me off."  
"And that was when the hollow transformation ended, am I correct?"  
"Yes, but it didn't matter. Ulquiorra was nearly gone."  
"And Kurosaki-san didn't remember anything that had happened while he was in this other hollow form?"  
"No, he -" _shock and horror "Did I do that?" _"He was completely surprised."  
"I see." He lifts up the teapot, refills his own cup, glancing at Uryu, who shakes his head. "And that was when Hallibel arrived?"  
"Yes."  
"And what did she do?"  
_Drowning -_ "She held her sword at my neck and threatened to kill me if Ichigo didn't surrender. I would have fought back," He insists firmly. "But I had lost a hand fighting with Ulquiorra and couldn't use my bow. None of us were ready to fight again."  
"So Kurosaki-san surrendered?"  
"Yes."  
"And Ulquiorra?"  
"Hallibel forced Orihime to heal him."  
Ukitake nods. "And she was the one who imprisoned the three of you, correct?"  
"Her fraccion, actually. I believe Hallibel was occupied with driving the rest of the shinigami out of Hueco Mundo."  
"That was the report I was given as well." Ukitake says calmly. "Were you told why you were imprisoned rather than killed?"  
"No, but - well, obviously," He reaches up and adjusts his glasses. "Inoue-san's ability as a healer is invaluable in war time, and we were useful alive as collateral to hold against her."  
Ukitake must have noticed the hesitation in his words, because he asks, "But you thought there was another reason?"  
"Well - it was just a theory. No one told us anything. But I believe they thought they could turn Kurosaki's hollow form into a soldier. That was why they made us fight. They thought it would let the hollow form out"  
"And what do you think?" Ukitake looks him in the eyes, looking fully serious for the first time. "Would he have made a good soldier?"  
He meets Ukitake's gaze and doesn't flinch, hands digging into the arms of the chair. "If you want to know whether Kurosaki Ichigo is a _threat _to the Gotei Thirteen, you are a fool," He spits out bitterly "And if your paranoia and xenophobia drives you to try to destroy him as you tried to destroy Kuchiki Rukia, you will have proven yourself to be nothing but the worst of the shinigami legacy. Kurosaki Ichigo," He continues, rising, "Is nothing if not loyal, and, for reasons I will never understand, has decided that the shinigami have earned his loyalty. You have nothing to fear from _him._"  
There is a moment of silence when Uryu breathes deeply.  
"Feeling better?" Ukitake asks kindly, completely throwing Uryu off. "Here, take this, I'm sure your hand is very sticky now." he offers a napkin, and Uryu sees that he has reduced the Ohagi to paste coating his hand. "Now, as much as I admire your devotion to Kurosaki Ichigo, no one is talking about destroying anyone. As you may have noticed, we do have Vizards and a former Espada as part of the thirteen court guard companies now." Uryu begins to clean his hands with the cloth as Ukitake continues. "If Kurosaki-san has lost control of part of his hollow half, I'm sure they could be of help to him. As I understand it, he initially lacked control over even his hollow mask, but was able to develop his current level of control with their help, am I correct?"  
Uryu is rather embarrassed to realize that he does not, in fact, know how Ichigo came to gain his hollow powers, but he nods anyway, "My apologies, Ukitake-soutaichou." He bows again.  
"It's quite alright. Given... past events, I would be quite surprised if you weren't concerned. Please, sit."  
Uryu resumes his seat, and Ukitake asks, "Now, during these fights of yours, did you ever see Ichigo resume this exaggerated hollow form?"  
"No, well," He adds, at Ukitake's slightly raised eyebrows. "There was one time he lost control of the mask - but just the mask. And that was under extremely trying circumstances."  
"How so?"  
"The previous day they -" _black, or white, _wrong. "They fought him into the ground. His spiritual energy was all messed up. He was feverish all night, and he was still weak in the morning. That's why the hollow was able to take over."  
"And what did the hollow do in this case?"  
"It attacked me. I mean - we fought every day - but only just hard enough so that they wouldn't hurt Orihime. There was never killing intent. The hollow," he swallows "had killing intent."  
"And was Kurosaki-san able to regain control this time?"  
"Yes. At the - at the end."  
Likely in response to Uryu's expression, Ukitake does not continue this line of questioning.  
"I see. But I understand you were all finally able to escape thanks to Inoue-san?"  
"Yes."  
"Do you think you could explain how she was able to defeat her guard, from your perspective. I understand that the attack variant of her powers was destroyed."  
"It," He thinks back to the golden shield. "It was like her healing technique, where she rejects the damage done, but in this case she rejected the existence of a whole segment of matter."  
Ukitake takes a sip of tea. "Do you have any theories as to why she hasn't been able to use her healing capabilities since then?"  
"I -" He starts, then pauses. Looking up at Ukitake, he changes his statement. "Orihime hates to hurt other people. That's why her attacks were always so weak - she hates to see people suffer. To do what she did -" He shakes his head. "What she's gone through - it's enough to destroy someone. Don't ask anything more of her."  
Ukitake nods. "I think I understand. Now, if I may, one last question?" Uryu dips his head in acquiescence. "You were the last to fight Grimmjow. May I ask what your understanding is of his mental state?"  
"He's obsessed with Kurosaki." He responds immediately. "All he wanted to do was fight him again. Losing to a human must have really messed up his ego." He adds, allowing himself to smirk a little. "If you're worried about him attacking, you would be mistaken. I don't think he ever had any real loyalty to Aizen. The only one who has to worry is Ichigo, and he can handle him." He finishes confidently.  
"Is that why you asked for him not to be killed? You didn't think he was a threat?"  
He thinks of the tight expression on Ichigo's face, the pity in his eyes. "My pride as a Quincy does not require that I kill defeated opponents."  
He suspects that Ukitake guesses at more than what he has said, but he does not press him further.  
"Well, I appreciate your time and consideration, Ishida-san." Ukitake says, standing up. "Kurosaki Ichigo is very fortunate to have such an ally." He bows.  
Uryu returns the gesture. "Thank you for your patience, Ukitake-soutaichou." He walks towards the door, and then turns around. "As a representative of the Quincy, may I say that I believe the Gotei Thirteen will thrive under your leadership."  
Ukitake smiles. "Thank you, Ishida-san."


	21. Loyalty

**AN: And now, the continuing adventures of People Drinking Tea and Talking About Things.**

Ichigo stands outside the doors, beyond which Ukitake is waiting, scuffing his feet.  
What if they did decide he was a threat? What if Orihime's and Uryu's stories had made them too worried, hadn't convinced them of his control?  
_(Or what if they told them you need to be put down, like the beast you've become?)_  
"Aw, hell," He mutters to himself. "Why am I dithering about this?"  
He grabs the handle.  
"Kurosaki."  
He turns around at the sound of Ishida's voice, letting go of the handle. The Quincy is jogging towards him, but slips into a stroll as soon as he looks at him. "I was outside - I must have missed you."  
"What's up?" Ichigo asks, confused.  
"I -" Uryu pauses, stands. "It's alright. That's all."  
He feels anxiety dissipate away from him, but jibes back. "That's it? Jeese, the way you were sprinting over here I was sure something had actually _happened_."  
"I'll try not to be so considerate next time, then, if you're just going to be ungrateful."  
Ichigo snorts. "I gotta go, if that's it. Shouldn't keep Ukitake waiting."  
Uryu waves him away, and he opens the door in much better spirits.  
"Hey, Jushiro,"  
The captain looks up from his desk. "Kurosaki-kun!"  
Ichigo finds that his fingers twitch at this.  
"I'm sorry, is that okay?" Evidently, Ukitake noticed.  
"No, er," Ichigo searches his brain to try and figure out what the problem is. "it's fine. I guess I just got used to having Orihime call me that."  
"Ah, I see. Would you prefer Ichigo-kun?"  
"Just Ichigo's fine." He takes a seat.  
"Tea? I have ohagi, or there are chocolates if you'd prefer. I know you haven't had an opportunity to eat this evening."  
Ichigo's mouth immediately starts watering. Damn, he hadn't had chocolate since - When _had _ he last had chocolate? That should have been the first thing he did when he got home. "Um, chocolate would be great, thanks."  
Ukitake smiles and pours him a cup of tea, pulling out a tray of chocolates and proffering a dish of sugar. Ichigo takes three lumps and a chocolate, resisting the temptation to grab the whole tray and run.  
"Now, Ichigo," the captain continues, "I've gotten a good summary of what happened in Las Noches from Inoue-san and Ishida-san, but there are a few questions I would like your perspective on, if that's alright?"  
"Yeah, no problem." Ichigo replies, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible while he braces himself. "Shoot."  
"Well," Ukitake takes a sip of tea. "Inoue-san and Ishida-san both described a transformation of sorts that took place on the dome of Las Noches, during the fight with Ulquiorra."  
_black blade kill kill kill - _"Yeah."  
The captain nods. "They also said that you appeared to have no memory of what happened during that transformation, and I just wanted to confirm whether they were correct."  
"I -" _blood on the white tunic, Zangetsu in the center "Did I do that?" _"When I - whenever the - whatever it was - stopped, I didn't know what had happened. It was like Ulquiorra had blasted me and then I woke up and Orihime was over me and Uryu..." His fingers are digging into the chair, he forces himself to stop. "Uryu had been stabbed."  
"So you don't remember anything in between?"  
"I didn't. But," He takes a deep breath, takes a sip of the tea. "After that, I've had nightmares - flashbacks - that seem like they might have been from then. But I don't know if they're real."  
"I see," Ukitake takes a chocolate from the tray. "Of anything in particular? Attacking Ulquiorra, perhaps?"  
"No." _black sword hand on his wrist kill kill kill -_  
- _his blade stabs him, over and over. _"Attacking Uryu."  
"Ah," Ukitake pauses for a moment, apparently thinking as he sips his tea. "I'm sorry, but, may I ask if there were any details in particular you remember?"  
"Yes." He breathes deeply. "Uryu's hand was on my wrist. I was holding Zangetsu with that hand. I think - I think I was holding it over Ulquiorra." He takes another chocolate and chews, trying to keep his hands steady. "Uryu might have been saying something - I don't know, I can't remember, it's all fuzzy - but then I turned around and stabbed him with Zangetsu. And then..." He shakes his head. "Yeah, I don't know."  
"Well, that tallies with Ishida-san's account." He looks approvingly at Ichigo. "So it seems that you - your non-hollow half - had at least some awareness, however limited. That will make the Vizard's job easier in training your control."  
"Wait, you," He stutters, tea slopping over the edge of his cup. "You think I knew that was happening? You think I condoned that? That I _wa -_" He cannot get the word, _wanted_, out, and Ukitake cuts across him.  
"No, no, nothing like that. You obviously had no control over what was happening. I'm thinking of awareness in the sense that someone taking a light nap might be aware of people speaking around them. It just means that your hollow half isn't completely cut off from you, so it will be easier to deal with it. Additionally," Ukitake continues, looking at him more clearly. "Ishida-san mentioned another incident in which your hollow half had some control. Do you think you could tell me what you remember from that?"  
_Uryu torn in two, broken on the ground -_  
_-blue blade buried in his gut, tearing him apart._  
"I was awake during the end of it. I could hear him - the hollow talking - and Uryu. I could feel him attacking Uryu. But," He adds, thinking of the silent buildings. "He wasn't in my inner world - the hollow. Usually he's there, even if he's in control. But he wasn't."  
"But you were able to get back control eventually?"  
"Yeah. I could feel my hand -" _the wide eyed face, the feel of his trachea being crushed. _"Hurting Uryu. And I made it stop. But only at the end."  
"Well, that is a hopeful sign." Ukitake raises his teacup. "Moving back slightly, Ishida-san expressed the theory that Aizen kept the two of you alive because he believed the hollow form you used against Ulquiorra would make a useful soldier. Do you agree?"  
Ichigo chuckles. "He told you that?"  
"Yes," The captain looks confused.  
"That's funny." Ichigo snorts. "It's just, whenever I asked him, he'd always spout some bu - some nonsense. I think he hoped I wouldn't figure it out. Even though I'm not as smart as he is, I'm not dumb either."  
"So you agree with his theory?" Ukitake asks.  
"Yeah," Ichigo responds. "I think Uryu just thought it would make me feel bad, or something, that we were in there because of me - my hollow. But since it kept us alive, I mean, there are worse things."  
"Of course." Ukitake sips his tea, and Ichigo takes the silence as an opportunity to take more chocolate. "Speaking of Ishida-san, I didn't wish to ask him, but he seems to have a much lower spiritual presence than I would expect of someone who fought the sixth espada."  
"Yeah," Ichigo swallows. "He - well, he didn't say, but I think he's lost his Quincy powers."  
"He didn't tell you?" Ukitake lowers his tea cup. "I'm a bit surprised. Is that usual?"  
"Sort of, yeah." Ichigo takes another bite of chocolate. "After - well after we invaded soul society, last time." He looks a bit sheepish.  
Ukitake smiles. "Trying to rescue my subordinate from an unjust execution. I remember."  
"Yeah, well," He continues, feeling a bit more confident. "He lost his powers after that too. I don't know what happened then, but he got them back later. But he didn't tell us anything then, either."  
"Really?"  
Ichigo shrugs. "That's Ishida for you. He's an odd guy."  
"Do you happen to have any idea how he got his powers back that time?"  
"Well," Ichigo rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, "I think it had something to do with his dad. But I don't really know what the deal was."  
Ukitake takes a sip of tea. "So his father is a Quincy?"  
"I guess." Ichigo is embarrassed to find how little he knows about Uryu's family, after being in a cell with him for nearly a month. "Uryu's never really talked about him. I know he was trained by his grandfather, so I mean, his dad hasn't really had much to do with that. But I do know he doesn't like shinigami," Ichigo remembers bitterly.  
"Oh?"  
"Well," He admits, "I'm not really sure, but he made Ishida promise not to associate with shinigami, in exchange for getting back his powers. Or something like that. I don't know."  
"But Ishida-san disobeyed?"  
"Well," His mouth quirks slightly into a smile, "When we went to Hueco Mundo, Ishida said that since I wasn't working with soul society, I wasn't really a shinigami. Something weird like that. But," Ichigo adds, not wanting Ukitake to get the wrong idea about Uryu's opinion on shinigami. "Uryu and his dad don't get on. At least," He adds, "I'm pretty sure they don't. Uryu lives on his own, and I mean, if you're still in school and you live apart from your parents, you must really have a problem with them, right?" For the first time, Ichigo wonders what Uryu returned to after they escaped from Hueco Mundo, without family to greet him.  
"Of course," Ukitake responds, taking Ichigo out of his thoughts. "If I may ask, though, do you have any idea why he lost his power this time, though? I don't know if you saw -"  
"Yeah, I saw the last bit of his fight with Grimmjow." He chokes back a spike of cold panic. "Uryu got hit by one of the - what did he call them? - gran rey cero, or something. But he - I dunno, he absorbed it and spit it back out again. Sort of like what Nel does. But I think it overloaded his system."  
"Well," Ukitake refills his teacup. "I am very sorry for Ishida-san's loss. I do remember that the Research and Development team had been looking into ways to make the Quincy arrows capable of purifying hollows, rather than destroying them, since they realized there were still Quincy around. But," He sets down the teapot. "I suppose it's a moot point now."  
Ichigo forcibly relaxes his fingers from around the chocolate in his hand and takes another bite. "Well, he got his powers back before. Don't count him out yet."  
A sympathetic smile graces Ukitake's face. "Of course. In any case, I did have one further question, about Ishida-san's opponent."  
"Yeah?" Ichigo asks, somewhat taken aback.  
"Why did you want him not to be killed?"  
Ichigo forces himself to snort. "Hey, that was Ishida's dumb idea, not mine. Something about power structures."  
"But," Ukitake insists, setting down his teacup on the desk. "Unless I have misjudged you both, which is possible," Ukitake admits, "He did so because you wanted Grimmjow to remain alive. Or," he allows, "he thought you did."  
This observation, so closely in line with his own vaguely formed theories, startles Ichigo. He takes another chocolate. "It's just, well," He pauses, sits back in his chair. "It wasn't like he was a big fan of Aizen, or anything. He was just interested in a good fight. He even had Orihime heal me before he fought me - he was more interested in his own - code of honor or whatever, than winning. He could have killed me and saved Aizen some trouble, but he didn't. He even reminded me a bit of" _(of me) _"Kenpachi, sort of."  
"I see," Shadows dart around Ukitake's face, and Ichigo regrets bringing up Kenpachi. "Well, that clears up a lot of things, Ichigo. I imagine you'll want to meet with Kensei-taichou and Yadomaru-taichou at some point, but I'm sure you can decide that on your own schedule."  
"Yeah, that's fine."  
Ukitake stands up, and Ichigo does the same, but not without glancing longingly down at the chocolates.  
"You can take a few, if you'd like." Ichigo looks up, slightly embarrassed that he'd been so obvious, "I'm sure the food in Las Noches wasn't quite to your taste."  
"No," He chuckles a little. "No, it wasn't." He picks up a few of the chocolates. "These really are very good," He adds, honestly. "Thanks."  
"Of course!" Ukitake says, beaming. "Thank you very much for your time, Ichigo."  
"Yeah, no problem."  
He is halfway to the door when Ukitake adds. "Ichigo?" He looks back. "You are very fortunate." Ukitake smiles when Ichigo tilts his head in question. "You have very loyal friends."  
"Yeah," He thinks of Uryu jogging up to him. "I know." Ukitake has already turned away, looking back down at a sheaf of papers, when Ichigo adds. "Ukitake-soutaichou?" The honorific sounds odd coming out of his mouth, but he says it anyway.  
"Yes?" Ukitake looks back up at him.  
"I'm, um," He stutters, not sure how to say this. "I'm sorry for your losses."  
Ukitake ducks his head, staring back down at the desk, face in shadow, and Ichigo regrets saying anything, but then the captain turns back to him. "Thank you, Ichigo."


	22. Rescue

**AN: Agh I am so, so sorry, but I'm going to have to slow this down to once per week – there are only two chapters after this one, so I'm trying to get more of a lead before summer ends. So sorry again!**

It has been four hours and two bowls of cold soup when Uryu finishes the make up work assigned to him. He tosses the last book onto the floor, where it joins the uncharacteristically slovenly pile. _It's good enough. _It feels strange to think that, to have forced himself to speed up an cut corners. He bites his lip and stacks the pile more neatly before pulling the sheaf of designs out of his bag.  
Flipping through them quickly, he shoots an anxious glance at his closet. Further inspection confirms his suspicions: he doesn't have the supplies he needs to complete these designs.  
For a second, he allows himself the luxury of contemplating leaving these designs for another day and surrendering to sleep, but the fact that he is working by the illumination of a dying flashlight and hasn't had a simple cup of tea since soul society because there's no water quickly squashes the fevered hope.  
He scribbles down a list, grabs a dusty coat from the closet, and is out the door in a minute.  
The drowsy shopkeeper offers a surprised greeting when he enters the store, well lit such that it stands out from the closed shops around it at this hour. When he leaves he is two bags heavier and his wallet is empty.  
He has a spreadsheet running in his head with due dates for the rent and the money from his commissions and the expected payment at Ezra and Anthony's shop and the cost of electricity running in his head when the tree falls in front of him.  
He jumps back, startled -  
- and then he sees the thing that has caused the tree to fall.  
For a second his brain goes on autopilot, and he thinks: _Oh, no problem _and his fingers twitch towards his wrist.  
But nothing is there, and he is alone and completely vulnerable to the masked behemoth stalking towards him.  
He has nothing left.  
The blade that swings down comes out of nowhere, and Uryu realizes how profoundly blind he has become to reiatsu, to not have sensed Kurosaki Ichigo coming a mile away.  
The hollow dissolves, and Ichigo lands with a neat thump.  
"Hey,"  
Uryu begins to catch his breath. "Hey,"  
"You good?" The shinigami asks, head tilted slightly.  
He pushes up his glasses. "Of course,"  
Ichigo nods. "Good."  
There is a moment of silence that stretches and groans, and it feels utterly unlike the companionable moments of stillness that had found them after dinners in the cell.  
Finally, Ichigo says, "Well - I'll see you then."  
Uryu bows his head in agreement, afraid to speak, and when Ichigo leaves, he whirls around and lands a fist on the fallen tree, because he's been rescued by _Kurosaki Ichigo._  
_(But he was there. Maybe he - )_  
He walks home with bruised knuckles.

_Blood._  
_The room is brimming with it. He is drowning in it. _  
_Faces drift in the sea._  
_Uryu's eyes are glazed, colbalt blue draining away, unseeing._  
_Grimmjow laughs. "You fool. You're too late."_  
_The dead eyes meet his. "It doesn't matter that I'm dead. You don't care."_  
_"And who's fault is that, hmm?" Grimmjow shifts, his face changing to Ichigo's inner hollow's, and the black blade falls and tears through Uryu's body. "You _wanted_ this."_  
_"It doesn't matter." And suddenly Uryu is up and in front of him, his face blitzing between cold fury and terrified pain like an old television screen on the fritz. "Why should it? I don't care." _  
_And he shoves the blue blade into his gut._  
_He screams -_  
He bites back the yell as he hurls upright. He heaves out breaths, steadying himself as he feels sweat drip down his back. He can hear the rhythm of breathing on the other side of the room. _Good. Uryu's here. I didn't wake him. He's safe. _He can feel his muscles begin to relax, his fingers loosen -  
Then he feels the blanket over him, and realizes he is not in the cell, he is in his room, the breathing is not Uryu, it is Chad, above him on the bed.  
He is seized by the irrational, panicked fear, _Uryu -_, and he doesn't even hear the muttered. "Ichigo?" as he throws himself out the door, chucking himself out of his body.  
It hasn't even landed on the hallway floor when he has fallen into shunpo, flying in the direction of Uryu's apartment, reaching out for the faintest trace of spiritual ribbons.  
The trail leads him away from the apartment complex, and he feels fear squirm in his gut when he feels the traces of a much colder presence nearby.  
_Hollow._  
He tightens his grip on his blade.  
When he attacks the hollow, it is a perfect cut through the mask, from behind, just like Rukia had tried to teach him.  
Uryu's face is tight, scared and almost resentful, when he lands, and he almost makes some snide comment about consideration and ungratefulness, but then a chilling thought steals over his brain: What if their positions were reversed? What if he had lost his powers, and Uryu had just saved him?  
So he bites his tongue and simply greets the boy with a nonchalant, "Hey,"  
Uryu looks up at him. "Hey,"  
"You good?" He asks, and tries not to think about what would have happened if he hadn't woken up, if he hadn't been looking.  
"Of course." Uryu says primly, and again Ichigo bites back a snide remark about saving his ass.  
"Good." He says, and means it.  
When the silence expands slowly between them, he finds himself too tongue tied to ask where on Earth Uryu was going at this hour, or what's in the stuffed shopping bag he's carrying. Finally, he just tells him, "Well - I'll see you then." and has to force himself not to stutter.  
Uryu nods, and Ichigo slips back into shunpo, to home, afraid to look at him any longer.  
When he gets home, Chad is sitting up in the kitchen. "Did you find him?"  
"Huh?" Ichigo ducks into the hallway, distracted by the search for his body.  
"Uryu. Did you find him?"  
"Uryu?" Ichigo finds his slumped over body leaning against the doorframe.  
"You were muttering his name in your sleep," Ichigo is very, very glad that he is out of the kitchen, so that Chad doesn't see the way his face has turned red. "I figured you had gone out to look for him."  
"Oh, yeah," He shifts back into his body. "There was a hollow. It's fine now."  
He is about to say something when he walks back into the kitchen, but then it's gone.  
"Ichigo," Chad says, and he looks up. "We all have nightmares. All of us." And Ichigo stares at the table. "It'll be okay."  
"Did you ever hurt them?" Ichigo asks, voice low and soft and hurt.  
"Who?"  
"Rukia. Renji. Tatsuki. Anyone you - you cared about." He stutters, feeling miserable and strained and unlike himself. "Did you ever hurt them?" When Chad doesn't answer, he says bitterly. "Then your nightmares aren't like mine."  
He is halfway to his room when Chad responds, brutally serious. "Do you know what happens in my nightmares?" Ichigo studies the paint on the wall. "I lose control. I hurt people like I used to. My friends. And," Chad pauses, Ichigo can hear him breathe a sigh. "I _enjoy _it."  
Ichigo can barely force out the words through his throat. "And what makes them go away? The nightmares?"  
Chad speaks very gently, resting a hand on Ichigo's shoulder. "They don't go away," And Ichigo feels the muscles in his neck slump and his forehead come to rest against the wall. "But when I wake up, I try to remember times that I protected them, or helped them. And that makes it a little better."  
"And what if," His eyes are burning, he blinks furiously. "What if there isn't anything like that? What if everything you've done has hurt them?"  
"Ichigo," And Chad puts both hands on his shoulders, turns him around to face him. "I know you. And you aren't that person."  
He ducks his head, steps away. "Maybe I am."  
Ichigo barely sleeps that night.  
They don't speak in the morning.

Uryu sleeps fitfully, in the wee morning hours, with dreams of Grimmjow's laugh and exploding Ceros and Ulquiorra's blade and the drowning oppression of the shark. The mask of _it _runs through it all, and he is stabbed and stabbed and stabbed -  
At last, before he wakes, two eyes with black sclera's and coal bright pupils stare back from the abyss.  
A buzzing voice, like countless voices speaking at once. _"Hello,"_  
When he wakes up, he puts it all down as a nightmare.


	23. Healing

**AN: Thanks as always for all of your reviews! I hope you enjoy this chapter.**

"Kurosaki-kun?"  
Ichigo looks up from the railings. "Hey, Orihime."  
She sits down beside him, slipping her legs under the bar and letting them dangle out over the edge of the roof. "I just thought you might want to know - I can heal again."  
"What?" He looks at her properly, and she beams at him, bouncing slightly as her legs kick back and forth. "Orihime, that's amazing! What happened?"  
"Eheh," She rubs the back of her head and looks sheepish. "I punched some things."  
"Oh." He tries to picture this and fails. "Okay?"  
"Oh - no. It was fine - I was with Tatsuki at the dojo."  
The mental image continues to fail to materialize. "Oh, gotcha." He glances around. "Where is she, anyway?"  
"Oh, she's in our tree. I finished lunch early and I wanted to tell you myself. But," She looks down at the box beside him. "You've barely touched your lunch, Kurosaki-kun. And you're not eating with your friends."  
"Yeah," He shrugs, "I guess I just don't really feel much like talking today." _Or yesterday, or the day before that. _  
She nods. "I understand. That's why I like eating lunch with just Tatsuki. I can be quiet and she doesn't mind." She smiles at him a little, picking up a smidgeon of his lunch and tasting it. "Mm, this is a good lunch."  
He takes a bite because she is smiling so widely, and realizes that he is hungry. Reaching in to take another handful, he asks, "Hey, Orihime, since, well," He looks at her, not wanting to offend. "Since you can heal again, would you mind coming to Soul Society with me? There's something I want to do and I'd like you to be there." _In case things go wrong. _  
"Of course, Kurosaki-kun." She beams at him. "Ukitake-soutaichou asked me to come back in any case, if I got my powers back. For the people 4th squad couldn't fix."  
Ichigo thinks of Byakuya's empty sleeve and feels his arms go cold. "Yeah, that's great. Meet you after school?"  
"Of course!" She tells him brightly, swinging up from her perch.  
He finishes his lunch.

He is waiting.  
He doesn't like waiting.  
He gets up from the bench, paces past the door, behind which Orihime is attempting to heal Byakuya.  
"Relax, Ichigo." In spite of her words, Ichigo can see her fingers are knotted on the sleeve of her shihakusho, and she leans against Renji's shoulder heavily. He stares into space, running fingers through her hair absent mindedly. "Pacing won't make it happen faster."  
He gives no response, just turns and walks past the door again.  
"Ow!"  
The door has opened, slamming him in the nose.  
"Kurosaki-kun!" Orihime looks up at him, his hands clasped around his bleeding nose. "Oh dear, I'm so sorry."  
"No, my fault." He says, pinching the bridge of his nose.  
"Here, let me get that for you," She pulls up the golden shield. He looks up through it to see Byakuya, standing straight and flexing his new hand.  
"Nii-sama." Rukia has risen, brushing her hand against his sleeve.  
"I am," He stretches out the hand, palm wide. "Perfectly fine, Rukia." He turns and delivers a deep bow to Orihime. "Thank you for your assistance, Inoue-san."  
Orihime dips into a shallow returning bow. "O-of course, Kuchiki-taichou."  
"Abarai-taichou."  
Renji snaps to attention. "Yes, Kuchiki-taichou?  
Byakuya gestures down the hall. "With me."  
Renji scampers to follow, and Rukia sighs and trudges after him. "Just healed," She mutters to herself. "But no, you couldn't just settle down and have a nice cup of tea, you have to go fight something..."  
Ichigo snorts, then turns to a quiet cough behind him.  
"Inoue-san? Kurosaki-san?"  
"Oh, hey, Hanataro."  
The boy smiles nervously. "Inoue-san, there are more people waiting in the main room."  
"Lead the way, Yamada-kun." She beams at him.  
When they enter the room, Ichigo is confronted with the sight of rows and rows of cots, occupied with shinigami, laying back or sitting upright, heads turning to face them as they enter. He faces them, some with empty eye sockets, mouths twisted by scars, some with empty sleeves or missing legs, others with faces contorted as though every movement brought them pain, and sees an identical expression in all of their eyes, a beautiful mixture of hope and awe. He feels his stomach squirm with a mixture of pride and fear. How can he possibly live up to that transcendent expression?  
Orihime doesn't seem to be deterred, letting Hanataro lead her to the nearest bed, where a figure lies still. He hears, distantly, her quiet question. "Hello, I'm Orihime, what's your name?"  
He is distracted from the answer by a child's voice. "Kurosaki-san? Are you Kurosaki-san?"  
Turning around, he sees wide, eager eyes staring up at him, framed by blonde hair. The kid - he can't be more than ten - has pushed himself upright with both arms, empty pants dangling over the edge of the cot. Right then, he wishes he had made it out of Hueco Mundo earlier, so he could have been the one to kill Aizen, because the sight appalls him. The child's face is glowing, though, so he swallows his rage and grins back. "Call me Ichigo,"  
"Ichigo," He breathes it out like the word is magic.  
He thinks of Orihime, and asks. "What's your name."  
"I'm Coul." He says enthusiastically. "Did you really get bankai in three days? Everyone says so."  
"Yeah," He says, surprised by the speed of the question. "Yeah, I did."  
"Wow," He says, drawn out and breathy. "That's _amazing._" He blushes. "I can't even do shikai."  
He reaches over, ruffles Coul's hair and is rewarded with a look of utter glee. "I'm sure you'll get it."  
His face shines. "And did you really beat Madamre-taichou and Zaraki-taichou and Abarai-taichou and Kuchiki-taichou?" He spills out.  
"Er. Yeah. Yeah, I did."  
"Wow." He says again. "That's _incredible."_  
"Thanks?" He replies, nervous and a bit overwhelmed.  
"What's Hueco Mundo like?" He asks instantly, oblivious to Ichigo's discomfort. "I've never been there. Is it full of hollows?"  
"Not really," Ichigo responds, "It's more like a big empty desert."  
"Does anything grow there?"  
He thinks of Ishida breaking off a twig of a stone tree, a contemplative expression on his face. "Well..."

Four cups of tea and two cookies later, Orihime has healed everyone in the room. Ichigo hovers in the door as she is surrounded by thanks and well wishes. She floats in the center of them effortlessly, her smile somehow managing to make it seem like there was no where else in the world she would rather be, and that each and every one of the people around her commanded the entirety of her attention and her compassion.  
She turns and beams at Ichigo as the crowd flutters away. "You said you had something you wanted to do, Kurosaki-kun?"  
"Er, yeah," He says as murmurs of thanks pass by him with the departing shinigami. "You feeling up to it?"  
"Of course." She says lightly.

They had been expecting him.  
Kensei, Mashiro, and Lisa lounge around the front of the ninth division, along with, unexpectedly, Nel.  
He coughs. "Hey,"  
Mashiro looks around. "Hey, Berry-tan!"  
Behind her, Kensei folds his arms. "So you want help with your hollow, do you?"  
On the wall, Lisa has reburied herself in a magazine.  
"Er, yes," Cautiously, he adds, "Kensei-taichou."  
The vizard snorts. "Well, come on in then."

The buildings rise around him.  
He strolls and leaps among them. When he doesn't see either Zangetsu or his hollow immediately, he calls out. "Hey! Anyone around here?"  
A faint stirring directs his attention downward. His hollow is slumped on the curb. "Hey, Ichigo." He twirls Tensa Zangetsu around a bone-white finger absently.  
"Hey," He replies, nonplussed. "What's up?"  
The pale face looks up at him, hair drooping and eyes sunken. "I'm tired, Ichigo."  
"Tired?" He repeats, taken aback.  
The hollow's mouth quirks upward. "I'm your spiritual energy, Ichigo. When _you_ get tired, _I_ get tired."  
The white hair is damp and matted, and when Ichigo looks up, he sees patches of clouds spitting down rain. He bites his lip, thinking of Zangetsu's words. "But," he replies, nervously, "I've - you've - we've been fighting. The past month. You should have loved that."  
Gold eyes narrow. "You know better than that, Ichigo. You know that wasn't fighting. Your heart was never in it. Never once did a _scrap _of killer instinct fall from your blade. It made me _sick._"  
"You had plenty of time for _your_ heart to be in it." Ichigo spits bitterly, anger flaring up inside him. "You nearly killed Uryu _twice._"  
His hollow slams the blade into the concrete, smashing a crater into the sidewalk. "Don't talk about _Ishida Uryu._" He snarls back. "I wish I _had _killed him - the coward should be_ dead _and you kn-"  
"_Shut up_!" Ichigo swings out his blade, leaping to his feet, and the pale mirror of his face twists.  
He steps sideways, and they begin to circle each other. "He makes you _weak._" The hollow hisses, "Prancing around with his capes and his Quincy pride, and you don't know whether you should protect him or trust him or fight him. You look at him and you can't tell if you want to punch him or kiss him -" he taunts, and then his face slides suddenly into rage again " - do you know how that _feels?_ To be pulled this way and that way and up and down - it's _nauseating."_  
His fingers dig in to the cloth wrapping the blade's hilt. "Uryu... is... my... friend." He growls. "He doesn't make me _weak._"  
"No?" His head tilts. "Tell me, what kept you on that dome? Who made you surrender?" When Ichigo doesn't respond, he continues. "Oh, that's _right, _I forgot, _Ishida Uryu._ Because you just couldn't help yourself." He sneers. "Because you just couldn't let anyone but _you _be the one to kill hi -"  
"No!" Ichigo yells, and slams his blade against the hollow's, and laughter rings around them.  
Surrounding buildings crumble and shatter as they trade blows.  
"Do you know how it feels to become a beast, Ichigo?" The hollow yells. "To be pushed to that point, to be that desperate? Do you know what that _did to me?"_  
The white blade stabs, pale arm lunging, face twisted into a hideous mockery of itself, and Ichigo spins aside, catches the arm, twists it aside. "Yes." He murmurs into the ear, thinking of his own fingers wrapped around Uryu's neck, and rams his sword through the pale imitation.  
Blood drips down his face as he walks away.  
He is only just beginning to wonder _Why isn't it dissolving? _when he hears the roar.  
_Oh, no._  
Spinning around, he sees the massive figure rise, long hair streaming, clawed feet cracking the cement.  
_Was that really what I looked like? _He considers, feeling cold. _Uryu still tried to stop me, when I became _that_? _Guilt twists and writhes in his stomach, strangling out the vague, warm feeling that simmers at the thought.  
The deep, bull yell echoes off the walls, and he redirects his attention. Experimentally, he fires off a Getsuga, but it barely annoys the beast. Two glowing cero's force him to leap aside, and he ducks behind a building. From beyond, he hears the creature stamp its feet.  
_Okay, so, big, powerful, but not very smart. _He takes a deep breath. _Alright. Time to think like Uryu. _The thought makes him grin.  
Taking a cursory glance around, he sees a narrow alleyway. _Good. That'll make it difficult for it to maneuver. _He assesses the buildings beside it, yeah, a good Getsuga should be able to take them out.  
He steps out. "Hey, you!" He hurls two Getsugas in quick succession just to get its attention. Turning his way, it bellows again and charges after him. He darts into the alley, quietly elated, and leaps upward.  
It looks around, confused, in the alley, as he perches above it. Aiming carefully, he launches waves of black energy that send the walls crashing down, and he jumps to float mid air.  
_Let's see it get out from under that. _He smirks at the pile of rubble, massive, and saunters downward -  
- A massive cero blasts aside the building fragments _Holy shit!_  
The huge figure, barely bloodied, stomps the ground, staring up at him. As the bricks hurtle to ground, they stare at each other in silence. _Can it not walk on air...? _The question brings a new idea, he smirks, remembering Uryu sending Yammy careening through a hole in the Las Noches floor.  
Hitting the ground, he shouts "Come and get me!" and fires off an incendiary Getsuga before sprinting for the nearest tall building. Silently hoping that his inner world is developed enough to have stairs and separate floors, he dashes inside. Staring around, he finally hits upon a promising door, and throws it open, hurling himself up the stairs as he hears the doors collapse behind him under the force of crushing hands.  
When he feels he has gotten high enough, he steps out of the stairs and blasts a hole through the floor. He does the same thing on the next, and the next, and then finally stops, panting.  
He hears the deep, snorting breaths before he sees the creature stride out.  
"Yeah, here, just a bit." He leaps aside from a cero that smashes through a window. "Nyeh, nyeh, come and get me!" He says, feeling childish as he maneuvers his opponent to the center of the floor. _Perfect. _"Getsuga Tenshou!"  
There is a momentary look of confusion at the seemingly misaimed attack before the floor collapses completely, sending the creature plummeting. He allows himself a momentary grin before the ceiling begins to collapse, and he has to smash his way out of a window.  
From outside, he watches as the whole building crumbles, tumbling downward in a cloud of dust. But the world remains intact, so his work isn't done yet. He slips down through the air.  
The creature is still trying to claw its way out from crushing block of concrete. As he draws his blade, he can hear it mutter, faintly "Protect you... I'll protect you."  
"I know." He replies, and shoves the blade through its neck.

When the buildings collapse, the first thing he feels is a sense of crushing weight. He tries to move his legs, and they feel heavier. Slowly, he becomes aware of long hair brushing against his back. He sees looks of relief on the surrounding faces, Orihime healing wounds at the edge of the arena. "Hey guys," He says, and his voice sounds unusually deep to his ears.  
"Ichigo?" Orihime asks cautiously. Kensei lowers his bloody sword, letting his mask collapse.  
He scuffs his feet, testing out the oddly configured body. "Yeah,"  
Mashiro swings down from her perch under Orihime's shield, whole. "Good job, Berry-tan!"  
"Yeah, thanks," he replies, distractedly, flexing his wrist. "Watch out, I want to try something." Raising his hand, he concentrates and fires an experimental cero. It blasts away one wall of the arena.  
Round eyes stare. Worried he might have scared Orihime, he focuses on coming back to himself.  
It is a much more powerful sensation than the dissolving of his mask, running around his whole body. He staggers when the form collapses, suddenly off balance.  
"Ichigo? Are you alright?"  
He looks at Orihime, her brown eyes concerned. "Yeah, I'm good."

When they finally step out Urahara's shop, the sky is already beginning to fade into a soft edged blue. Orihime smiles at him, stepping away. "I'll see you tomorrow, then, Kurosaki-kun."  
"Wait," He chokes out before she can start her journey for home, finally voicing the idea that has been sitting in his stomach. "There's someone else we should visit first."

**AN: First off, apologies for the all-Ichigo chapter – Uryu will be back in the next one. **

**Secondly, Ichigo's fanboy Coul is in no way a ridiculously subtle reference to Agent Coulson. Because I'm totally not obsessed with the Avengers. No, not me. Where would you get that idea?**


	24. An Invitation

**AN: Thank you so much for all of your lovely comments! I hope you enjoy this chapter. Updates will be on hiatus next week, but never fear, there are more chapters to come. **

His first impression is of darkness.  
"Please, sit down." Uryu waves Orihime towards a worn out desk chair. "I'm sorry, I don't often have guests." Ichigo can see Uryu's pinched look of embarrassment as he adjusts a flashlight wedged into a lamp to provide them all with better light, but the expression is quickly smoothed away.  
The room, Ichigo sees, is lit only with flashlights, propped on the desk and lamp, previously aimed at two mannequins. The battered busts are patched with duct tape, and look like they were rescued from a back lot or dumpster. Half-finished blouses sit on them, and spools of thread and cloth spill out onto the surrounding floor. Other clothing is draped over the small kitchen counter, preparing to be sold, he assumes. The apartment, he realizes, is tiny, almost claustrophobic. A hanging curtain is all that separates out what must be a sleeping space. There is no couch, only a desk and the solitary chair.  
Ichigo stands awkwardly behind Orihime, and Uryu stutter steps in front of them, clearly on edge. Bags hang deeply under his eyes, and Ichigo wonders, painfully, how long he's been working at this, if he's had solid rest since he's been home.  
"Can I offer you some te-" Uryu looks at the kitchen and bites his lower lip. "Can I offer you a glass of water?"  
Not missing a beat, Orihime replies. "That would be lovely, Ishida-kun."  
Uryu rifles through the tiny cupboard, clearly happy to have an excuse not to look at them. Ichigo feels his stomach squirm as he looks at the piles of clothes and the dead lightbulbs. This was how Uryu made his living. He was sixteen. He shouldn't have to make a living. He shouldn't have to work sleeplessly in the dark and go without tea. He shouldn't have to struggle after he'd struggled so much.  
_He shouldn't have to be on his own. _  
It's only when Uryu begins to speak that he realizes he's dug his fingers into the back of Orihime's chair. "So, the two of you had something you wanted to ask me about?"  
"Yes," Orihime replies brightly while Ichigo rubs his fingers. "Kurosaki-kun thought," She looks back at him, and he nods, "that I might be able to give you back your Quincy powers."  
Uryu freezes completely, halfway across the room with the glass of water, mouth open, before quickly gathering himself again. "You've regained your healing powers?" She nods, hands closing around the glass that Uryu offers her. "That's - that's excellent."  
"I don't know if it will work, though - I've never done anything like this before. But if you're willing to let me try?"  
He pauses, and turns away to pick up a needle and thread from the floor, hiding his face. He stands up, holding the spool tightly in his hand. "Of course."  
He sits, cross legged on the floor in front of Orihime as her golden shield spreads out to cover him. Uryu closes his eyes, and Ichigo feels weak at the knees, because the quiet hope on the tranquil face makes him look more vulnerable than ever, more so than any blood or pain.  
They sit in silence for five minutes, then ten, a small clock sitting on the desk ticking away the quiet. Finally Orihime lets the shield collapse, looking upset. Uryu flexes his wrist, stretching his fingers as though calling for the bow, but no blue glow illuminates the room. He bites his lip.  
"You're tired," Ichigo says suddenly, vehemently to Orihime, anything to force away the creeping despair that is slipping onto Uryu's face. "You've been healing people all evening, of course you can't -"  
"It wasn't that," She cuts across him, firmly, "I'm sorry, Ishida-kun. I just - there was something wrong. I couldn't - it was - I didn't _understand _ what I was trying to reject. It wouldn't work. I'm sor -"  
Uryu stands up. "That's fine." He tells her, levelly, and when she looks at him beseechingly, he insists. "Really. It's fine. I appreciate you both taking the time to try and help."  
She stands up as well, prepared to go, but Ichigo feels like his feet are cemented to the floor. He cannot leave Uryu here, in the dark, alone.  
His mouth is frozen though, and silence droops around the three of them as Uryu fiddles with a spool of thread.  
"Well," Orihime says lightly, lifting the silence up and away gently. "I should go - Tatsuki's family will be having dinner soon, and I don't want to be late. I'll see you later, Kurosaki-kun, Ishida-kun?"  
Ichigo's throat is still stuck, but Uryu replies cleanly, with a nod. "Of course, Inoue-san."  
As the door closes behind her, Uryu walks over to the mannequin, threading his needle and bending over the unfinished blouse. "Was there something else you wanted, Kurosaki?"  
"Look," He says finally, frustrated with the darkness. "Why don't you - why don't you come over for dinner?"  
"I have work to do, Kurosaki." Uryu replies waspishly. "I don't need -"  
"No, listen, really -" He grinds his pride between his teeth. "Look, this homework is kicking my ass, and I could really use a hand."  
Uryu scoffs. "You haven't even looked at it, have you?"  
This is true, but he forces himself to sound dismissive. "Well, if you don't think you can do it -"  
He is rewarded by Uryu finally turning around to face him, raising his eyebrows.  
"Really, just," he says, a little desperately. "Yuzu's making dinner, and she always cooks fantastic dishes, but she always makes too much - really, you should come, because -" but he cuts himself off, afraid of stepping on Uryu's pride by demeaning his accommodations.  
Uryu turns away, finishing a stitch, and Ichigo's stomach drops, but he ties a knot, and reaches back for scissors. "I suppose I can come, if you insist."  
"That's - great." He stutters out, trying to bite back a grin and failing as Uryu goes to the closet and pulls out a jacket.  
The door shuts the darkness behind them.

The house is noisy and warm when they arrive, Karin and Isshin arguing, Yuzu calling out questions about the meal and Chad replying in a low voice over the shouts. After the darkness, it practically glows.  
Ichigo steps forward, ready to intercede between his sister and his dad, but then he realizes that Uryu is still hovering on the welcome mat.  
"Here, let me take your coat."  
The blue eyes widen a little with surprise at the offer, but he slides off his coat and hands it to Ichigo, who takes it with a smile. As he hangs the coat up, he kicks off his shoes, and Uryu follows suit.  
The sound of screaming steam and bubbles issues out of the kitchen.  
"I'll," Ishida coughs. "I'll go help with that, shall I?"  
Ichigo grins sheepishly. "That'd be great."  
And between the flying kick across the table and Chad's big hands catching Karin by the scruff and the excited voices from the kitchen and the warmth of cooking food, he can almost forget about the darkness.  
Almost.

"'For thou dost know, O Damon dear,' - see, I didn't get that line. Did I miss something in the previous scenes?"  
"What? No, no. Damon's part of an old Greek story. See, this guy Pythias was sentenced to death, but before he died he wanted to visit his family. The king called bull, though, and said if he let him - Pythias - go visit his family, he'd just run away, so Damon - Pythias's friend - volunteered to stay while Pythias left, and if Pythias didn't come back, Damon would be killed. So, they wait, and they wait, and the king is thinking, oh, yeah, he's gone for good, but then he turns up again at the last minute, after having swum to shore to get away from pirates. The king was really impressed with his loyalty, and so he let both of them off. So, when Hamlet calls Horatio 'Damon', he's just making a point about how close the two of them are."  
Ichigo finally lapses into silence, letting the book down on his knee, and finds Uryu and Chad both staring at him. Sheepishly, he realizes he has given a lecture on the reading that they are supposed to be helping _him _with.  
Uryu raises an eyebrow at him, and for just a second Ichigo thinks that he is going to call him on it, that he will snort and walk out and go back to the dark room all alone - but he simply leans back against the bedpost and lets a tiny, tiny smirk slip over his face, and Ichigo looks determinately down at the half-filled notebook page to keep his head on straight.  
He scrawls a couple more lines down - he's read the play at least a dozen times, he could probably write a summary in his sleep - and starts to ask, "So, biology?" when Uryu stands up abruptly.  
"Excuse me," He rushes out the door, barely not running. Ichigo and Chad look at each other before Ichigo catches a glimpse of the open page in Uryu's copy of Hamlet. He had flipped aimlessly to the end, where the publishers had included a small illustration of the final scene.  
Blood red swims before his eyes as Ichigo feels his hands begin to shake. "Shit, Uryu." He mutters to himself, scrambling to his feet. "Just a minute," He adds, waving off Chad, and runs out of the room.  
He hears the retching from the bathroom, and his stomach squirms as his hands tremble more violently. "Uryu?"  
A cough through the door. "I'm fine, Kurosaki."  
"Like hell - oh, come on," he says, slamming a fist against the stubborn doorknob. "Uryu, just unlock the door."  
Violent hacking, then he replies indignantly. "I'm on the _toilet._"  
"Oh, for -" He steps back. "Watch out."  
"Kurosaki, what the he -" Ichigo's foot slams the door open.  
"Ichi -!" Uryu's shout is cut off by another burst of retching. He turns away, forearms braced on the toilet seat, kneeling.  
Ichigo tosses aside concern for Ishida's pride with a muttered, "Dammit, Uryu," and crouches down beside him to sweep the black hair back, out of his face. "It's okay, it's okay, just breathe."  
"I'm _fine._" Ishida coughs. "I just got a little nauseous, that's all."  
"If this is fine, I don't want to see sick."  
"Very funny, Kurosaki." Uryu is breathing a little more evenly now, as he leans back away from the toilet.  
Ichigo swivels around and pulls a washcloth out of a drawer. "Here,"  
Ishida takes it without comment, wiping off his face as he sits up.  
Ichigo fidgets for a second, then says finally. "Hold on, let me get you a clean shirt."  
"Kurosaki, for god's sake, don't make a fuss -"  
Ignoring him completely, he continues. "And you should have some bread pudding, we have some leftover, always settles your stomach."  
"Kurosaki!"  
"Hold on, I'll be right back."

After Uryu has been bullied into eating a whole bowl of rice pudding, and the biology homework has been finished, it is nearly ten and pitch black outside.  
Uryu stretches out as he stands. "I should go -"  
"Are you kidding, it's dark already. It's like ten blocks to your house, you're not walking home."  
Ishida looks at him sideways. "Don't be ridiculous, Kurosaki, I'll be fine."  
"No one wanders around the city at ten at night, it's just stupid. Right, Chad?"  
Chad nods. "It wouldn't be a good idea."  
Ishida looks abashed at the unexpected alliance. "Well, what do you expect me to do, stay here?"  
"Yeah, sure, no problem. We can just throw a mattress on the floor."  
He raises his eyebrows in his patented look of disdain. "I have _work _to do."  
"It can wait 'till the morning." He shrugs nonchalantly.  
Uryu stares at him, and then sighs and sinks down on the bed.  
Ichigo is careful not to let him see him smile.


	25. Shatterpoint

**AN: Sorry for the wait, dear readers, real life is now a lot busier. One more chapter is written, beyond that I have to find time to write, so I'm staying to every other week hoping that something in the next three weeks I'll have time to write. I will keep you informed. I'm not dead yet!**

Ichigo gets up early.  
He scuffs his feet as he walks down the sidewalk, grumbling internally. _Urahara just_ mentions_ that he'll have to leave the shop behind, and whaddya know, dad just goes and _volunteers_ me for the job, then he doesn't tell me until more than a week later? I don't even have a clue how to run a shop..._  
Sighing, he pulls out the key from under the fake rock and opens the door to the shop. It's gotten dusty in Urahara's absence, and, looking around, he realizes he really doesn't have a clue what they actually sell here.  
He flips on the lights and searches around for the door to the back room. It's filled with uneven stacks of boxes, and Ichigo feels a mounting sense of dread that he is going to have to go through _all _of them.  
Ichigo checks his watch as he starts to pull open boxes at random, he only has a few minutes before he will have to leave for school. One is filled with candy, another with soul candy, one with gadgets he can't even guess the function of. Pushing more boxes aside, he finds a rack, much less dusty than the boxes, laden with cannons and guns. Ichigo can very clearly imagine Tatsuki hauling one of these over her shoulder, smashing up hollows with a maniacal grin.  
His eye is caught by a sheen at the bottom of the rack, a sleek, silver pistol. Picking it up, he notices fine lines of blue accenting it, just like Uryu's Quincy uniform. He smiles faintly, stuffing the pistol in his backpack. _At least he won't be defenceless._

"... though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready." Ichigo pauses, finally. "How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work?"  
He catches his breath as Chad, who is reading for Polonius (a bit of irony that Ichigo appreciates, if no one else) takes over for a moment. He sort of regrets volunteering so quickly to read for Hamlet, if not for the funny looks he got, at least for the ridiculous number of lines involved. But then again... "What ho, Horatio!"  
"Here, _sweet lord_, at your service." Uryu practically spits the words out from between his teeth, with a face that would certainly disqualify him from any tryouts for the role. Ichigo silently thanks the infinite universe that had allowed their teacher to pick Uryu to read for Horatio, until Uryu turns to glare at him _Oh god don't grin don't laugh or he'll kill you with a sewing needle and that would be a really embarrassing way to die._ Finally he realizes that the class is waiting on him for his line. "Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man..."  
It's a long monologue, and it flows beautifully - Ichigo has always had a soft spot for this one, even though it might not have the fame of "to be or not to be" or the blood-stirring passion of "once more unto the breach". He finds himself ignoring the classroom, the students, the teacher, the desk -  
"... Dost thou hear? Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could of men distinguish her election, s' hath sealed thee for herself..."  
He finds, to his chagrin, that he has left the book, speaking from memory, and his eyes have fallen upon Uryu. _Please, understand - _He is embarrassed at the thought, he bites his tongue and stares firmly back at the book. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Uryu's gaze drop.  
"For thou hast been..." He continues, more stiffly, trying to focus on the page and nothing else.  
The words have something different in mind, though, and his mind wanders to blood and darkness and pushed up glasses -  
He doesn't realize his mistake until well after the words are out of his mouth.  
"Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, as I do Uryu."  
It's the little coughing splutter from Ishida that makes him realize what he's said. He blinks furiously, wishing he could will blood away from his cheeks.  
Clearing his throat, he continues on. "Something too much of this..."

He is lucky that English is the last class of the day, because he has time to flee the classroom, slam his books into his locker, and hide in the restroom.  
Ichigo slams his forearms down on the side of the sink and stares into the drain. _What the hell is wrong with me?_  
A whisper seeps up from his brain: _you can't tell if you want to punch him or kiss him._  
"Fuck off." He growls.  
Wrenching the faucet on, he splashes water on his face, trying to cool his head. Staring at the mirror, he berates himself: _What the hell am I doing? Hiding out in the bathroom like a kid because I messed up a line? _He shakes his head, sending droplets of water splattering the sink, and shoves the door outwards.  
Ichigo barely gets five steps into the hall when he hears a voice behind him.  
"Ichigo."  
He turns around to spot the last person he'd expected here: Tatsuki.  
"Ichigo, what the hell is going on?" She demands  
God, he really can't deal with this right now. "What are you talking about?"  
"You know exactly what I'm talking about." She folds her arms.  
He shrugs, trying to be nonchalant as possible, continuing to walk down the hall. "No, I don't."  
"Goddammit, Ichigo," On closer examination, her eyes are red with suppressed tears, and bags droop from underneath them. "I thought we'd agreed to _trust _each other."  
He stops, turns around, and gives an exaggerated sigh. "What's the problem?"  
"Ichigo," Her voice is gentle, it barely sounds like herself. "How much do you care about him?"  
"What?" He tries to laugh, it comes out like a dying albatross. "I don't see how that's a problem."  
"Oh, fuck you," She swears, jerking her head back and tossing it back down. "It's your own goddamn fault you were always too dense to see it -"  
"What on earth are you going on about?"  
Her whole body is trembling. "She loves you!" She yells, stuttering a little, and Ichigo freezes. "She loves you," Tatsuki repeats, softly, "and I - I just want her to be happy." Tears are dripping down her face, the first explorers in new territory.  
"Tatsuki -" She nearly falls forward, and he lets her lean against his shoulder, a damp patch spreading on his jacket.  
"I love her." He's not even sure if he's heard it, it's so faint, lower than a whisper.  
Long orange hair disappears from around a corner, and Ichigo doesn't know what to do.

He practically runs home so he'll get there before Chad, because he cannot, cannot speak with anyone more right now. He stumbles into his room, locks the door, and collapses on the bed.  
"Fuck, fuck, fuck..."  
He can barely settle on what to panic about first.  
_In my heart of heart -_  
_How much do you care about him?_  
"Oh, _Hell." _He rolls over, flinging his head into his pillow.  
_I love -_  
"No, no, no, no, definitely no." He groans.  
_Well, you did kiss him. _Remarks a little voice in his head.  
_What? _He frowns into the blankets. _No, no, no, I was panicking then. I was probably trying to do CPR and my brain got mixed up._  
_Uh huh. _The inner voice, to his chagrin and frustration, sounds a lot like Rukia. _And all the hand holding and thinking about how pretty his eyes are and staring at the back of his neck in class was _aaall _mixed up too. _  
Ichigo slams his head into his pillow, a gesture which is slightly less dramatic than he might have hoped. _What the? I don't think his eyes are pretty!_  
_Really? _the voice adds skeptically, _Are you sure about that?_  
_Yes! Dammit._  
_Uh huh. _The voice is perfectly unconvinced. _And I'm sure you watch _Bad Shield _for the plot. _  
_What the hell are you implying?_  
_Well..._  
_No. No, god no. _Ichigo pulls his pillow over his head, as though it will block out the voice.  
_Oh, for god's sakes, Ichigo. _And here he can practically _see _Rukia huffing and crossing her arms. _You're acting like a child. It's nothing to be ashamed of. _  
"I. am. not. gay." He grinds his teeth together.  
_Bi, then? _  
Ichigo snarls into his pillow.  
_Honestly, Ichigo, you have beautiful women practically _throwing _themselves at you..._  
_Oh, for the love of - just because I'm not _Kon -  
_Please. You had Neliel practically in your _lap _in what could be charitably referred to as a _loincloth -  
_Oh come on!_  
_And all you were thinking about was that you were about to choke -_  
_I was!_  
_And you've seen _Shihouin Youruichi _naked -_  
_She surprised me!_  
_And you only felt slightly _embarrassed-  
_I have some sense of decorum!_  
_Whereas Ishida Uryu just has to look at you sideways and you blush like a schoolgirl. _  
"Oh god," He moans, sitting up and banging his head against the wall. "Shut up, shut up, shut up,"  
"Nii-san?" A knock at the door, Yuzu's voice. "Are you alright?"  
"Fine - I'm fine." He chokes up, hurriedly scrambling up to open the door. "What's up?"  
She bites her lower lip, looking up at him. "Er, I heard you shouting, I just wanted to check. But you're okay?"  
"Yeah, yeah, it was - nothing." He rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed.  
"Oh... okay." He forces himself to smile reassuringly. "I better get back to my homework then." He nods.  
When she leaves, he shuts the door slowly, turns around and slumps into his desk chair, resting his forehead against the desk.  
_I thought getting home was supposed to make things _easier.

"Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, as I do Uryu."  
He nearly chokes.  
He regrets the sound immediately, as he sees Ichigo's eyes fix back on reality, the elegant trance broken. Blood rushes to his cheeks, and Uryu knows the condition is mirrored on his own face.  
_It's a perfectly simple mistake, mixing up the names. A slip of the tongue. It doesn't _mean _anything. _But the rationalization does not stop him from rushing out of the classroom, skipping his locker entirely to lock himself inside a restroom stall.  
He barely has time to catch his breath before the door slams open. He freezes, he recognizes the stride, the irregular breathing.  
Ichigo leans over the sink, and Uryu tries not to breathe.  
"Fuck off." He hears Ichigo growl, and winces.  
Water splashes into the sink, and he hears feet stomping out of the room, the door hitting its frame.  
_See, He was just pissed off. He embarrassed himself. It was just a mistake. _  
_But, _a particularly perceptive voice whispers, _if it really was just a mistake, it wouldn't have bothered him that much. He would have just laughed it off. It would only make him angry if -_  
He shuts down the thought immediately; hope is a poison he refuses to swallow. Besides, he knows what he is worth, and it is nothing, nothing, compared to Ichigo.  
_(You do not deserve the luxury of daydreams)_  
Frustrated with his own weakness, he finally unlocks the stall. About to push open the restroom door, he hears shouting. "-always too dense to see it -" Arisawa.  
It's Ichigo's voice that makes him keep the door a crack open, to his shame. "What on earth are you going on about?"  
"She loves you!"  
He drops the door, muffling the voices, and crosses the room to the sink so he can't possibly hear any more.  
Water runs over his shaking hands.  
"Fine, I'm fine, I'm fine," he mutters to himself. "it's fine, it's fine."  
When he's sure they must be gone, he opens the door tentatively. The halls are quiet, he dashes to retrieve his forgotten textbooks from his locker.  
As his feet scrape against the sidewalk, he insists to himself: _This is good. Now he finally knows - now it's finally gotten through his thick skull. Now he'll go and tell Orihime and they will finally, finally end up together, and he'll be happy and she'll be happy and I'll be -_  
And that's where he stops, where he breaks down, because he will, he will be happy, just to watch them smile at each other, he will snipe and roll his eyes and be thrilled right down to the pit of his stomach, and he will sew her wedding dress and babysit their kids when they go on romantic getaways and will be stupidly, deliriously, sickeningly happy the whole time, and, goddammit, it would just be so much either if he could hate her and if he could get angry at him and just write the whole thing off and walk away, but he can't, he can't -  
He slams his foot into a telephone pole and swears. A flock of pigeons takes off, cooing, and with two deep breaths he is Ishida Uryu again.  
_It's fine. I'm fine._  
_(He has always been a terrible liar.)_

**AN: Just as a sidenote, for any readers who have struggled with their sexual orientation, etc, I'm not trying to mock or demean any of these issues. The scene just happened to occur to me as funny, so… Yeah. My apologies.**


	26. A Comedy of Errors

**AN: This chapter is basically pure humor. I regret nothing.**

**Also, real life is continuing to be busy, so this will be on hiatus for a bit. Not to worry though – it's not dead (I have too many plans to leave this unfinished!) – so just keep it on your alert lists and you should be seeing it up again soon.**

Ichigo is dithering.  
Ichigo doesn't like dithering.  
Ordinarily, he has his tried and tested method of problem solving: locate the source of the problem, and proceed to smash it until it stops being a problem. This had an unexpectedly high success rate, so he couldn't really be blamed for underdeveloping other problem solving tactics, right?  
Yeah, right.  
Unfortunately, he had a sneaking suspicion that smashing Uryu would only make his problems worse, and smashing himself was somewhat lacking in feasibility.  
He couldn't talk to Orihime, obviously, even though normally she would be the 'feelings' expert nearest.  
He took three seconds to picture trying to ask his dad for advice, snorted and shook his head.  
Chad wasn't a good option. Neither were Mizuro and Keigo. Tatsuki already wanted to hurt him.  
That left Rukia.  
Rukia was a good option. She was, what, a hundred years old, or something, she had to have some knowledge of … this sort of thing. And she was already in a - a _relationship_, so she had to be able to give good advice. Right?  
Oh god, she is never going to let him live this down. _Never. _He's going to die and become a shinigami full time and become a captain and she'll _still _be teasing him.  
He grits his teeth. Nothing could be worse than sitting here, doing nothing, dreading the time he had to go back to school  
Besides, he should train with Kensei and Liza again. He should try and see if he can bring the full hollow form out at will. That's a good excuse, right?  
… This is going to be torture.

He turns the sign on the door of Urahara Shoten to _Closed _ and clambers down the ladder to the basement, focusing on the handlebars to keep his hands from shaking.  
There, at the bottom, solid as ever, is the Senkaimon.  
Also lifeless.  
He walks over to it, steps up onto the base, steps across, nothing.  
He stares at it.  
Experimentally, he pulls out his substitute shinigami badge and pushes himself out of his body. He leaps across the barrier. Nothing.  
He waves the badge in front of the portal.  
It just sits there.  
He kicks it in frustration.  
Nothing.

"Dad,"  
Ichigo dodges the greeting kick.  
"Dad, do you know how to open Urahara's senkaimon?"  
Isshin tilts his head at him. "Of course, son, do you -?"  
"I need to practice with Kensei and Liza." He tells his dad flatly, hoping his face is as level as his tone.  
Ichigo's shoulder shakes as his dad claps him across the back. "Of course! Anything to help my eldest."  
When he finally dashes out of the interdimensional passage, he is huffing and puffing.  
_That was _way _too much hassle. _  
_Oh, of course, it's only traveling to the world of the dead._  
_Fair enough._ He sighs, trudging off in what he hopes is the direction of the thirteenth division.  
As he begins to pass buildings, he hears a quiet voice. "Kurosaki-san?"  
The source of the voice turns out to be a young boy, with mousy brown hair. Ichigo has the vague feeling that he's seen him before. "Hi?"  
"Oh - I'm Coul. Um, I met you in the infirmary?"  
"Oh!" He feels embarrassed. (And, for once, it's not because of Ishida Uryu, a tiny part of his brain muses. That must be an accomplishment.) "Sorry - I remember you, I'm just the worst with names and faces."  
"That's alright!" The child's face shines. "Were you looking for something? Classes are over so I can help if you want."  
"Um, well actually," Ichigo rubs the back of his neck. "I'm looking for the thirteenth division, but I don't know if I'm going the right way."  
Coul nods. "Well, the thirteenth is that way," He points in a direction slightly left of where Ichigo had been heading. "But if you're looking for Kuchiki-taichou, she was training with a bunch of new recruits." He looks up hopefully. "I can take you, if you'd like?"  
"Lead the way," Ichigo tells him, and he beams.

When they find Rukia, she is shouting at a couple of nervous-looking shinigami. "Stark, keep those kido focused! Banner, keep your spiritual energy under contr -" There is an explosion of green smoke, and Rukia emerges, coughing, ends of her hair frazzled.  
"Sorry, sorry," Mutters the second shinigami, staggering out of the smoke.  
She waves him off, "Alright, we're done for the day." The two shinigami scamper away, clearly relieved. "Ichigo!" She calls out as she turns around, rubbing the side of her head.  
"Hey, Rukia," he replies nonchalantly, stomach already queasy.  
She shakes her head gingerly, running her fingers through her hair. "What brings you here?"  
Ichigo shrugs. "Just felt like chatting," Looking around, he notices Coul glancing awkwardly between the two of them. "Hey," He adds, reaching out to pat the kid's head, "Good seeing you, Coul. Thanks for the help."  
"Of course!" Coul's smile looks like it would break his face. "Take care, Kurosaki-san!"  
Rukia has a tiny smile at the edge of her mouth when he turns back around. "What?"  
"Nothing," The smile grows. "What was it you wanted to talk about?"  
He looks around as shinigami pass by, the knot in his stomach getting tighter by the second. "Why don't we walk back to your division?" He asks, stalling.  
"Sure," She replies, nonplussed.  
As they start across the seireitei, Ichigo tries to find the words for his problem, "Listen, I was wondering if you could give me some advice,"  
She raises two narrow eyebrows in surprise, but replies easily, "Of course,"  
"It's just..." He stutters, "Well, I think I might - I might -" 'Like' would make him sound like a thirteen year old girl. He wasn't going to touch 'Love'. "have a thing for -" It sounded like something a group of teenage boys ribbing each other about a girl in their class would say, but he said it, so that was that. " - for Uryu."  
To his great surprise, her face lights up. "Really?"  
"Yeah. I mean, I think so." He mutters, unnerved.  
Rukia lets out a great shout of laughter that makes several shinigami turn and look at them. "Oh, I am going to make so much on this!"  
"What?" It takes him a moment to come to the horrifying conclusion. "You were _betting on me?_"  
"Well, yes," She tells him stoically, "I mean, I only found out about the pool after Renji and I got together, but -"  
"You were betting on _me and Uryu?_" He continues, brain in shock.  
"Of course," She smoothes out her hair and smirks at him, "That one was obvious from the beginning. 'Not worried' indeed." She grins maniacally. "They offered me great odds - I mean, they were practically laughing me out of there - but I _knew_ it!" Rukia jabs a triumphant finger at him, filled with glee.  
He looks at her cheshire cat grin and feels the knot in his stomach coalesce into a mass of pain. "Oh, god, you're not kidding, are you?"  
"What? No, of course not." She looks at him nonplussed. "Why would you think that?"  
He sighs. "I just want to know what I'm supposed to _do. _I mean, apparently Orihime's in love with me and Tatsuki's in love with her, and Uryu," He pinches the bridge of his nose and is frustrated to find that it reminds him of Ishida pushing his glasses up. "I don't even know."  
When he finally looks up, he finds that Rukia's expression has softened. "You need to tell him, Ichigo."  
"What? No, no, no, no," Ichigo shakes his head furiously, terrified at the thought. "No, I - no. I'd just - and he - he'd -" He stutters. "There's no way he -" Ichigo waves his arm aimlessly to indicate 'feelings'.  
Rukia snorts. "Please. Of course he does."  
"How on earth would you know?" He demands, glaring at her.  
She looks at him scornfully. "It's obvious, isn't it? I mean, he invades soul society for you, didn't he?"

"So did Chad and Orihime," Ichigo replies stubbornly.

"Yes, but," Rukia replies, looking at him as though he is about five. "They weren't overcoming a two hundred year old grudge and personal trauma to ally themselves with an enemy. Anyway, you must have seen the way he looks at you."  
Ichigo gapes. "I - he -" He struggles to wrap his brain around the concept, leaves the process running and jumps topics. "But - Orihime?"  
Rukia bites her lip for a moment, but then she speaks, and her voice is low with certainty. "Orihime would want you to be happy, Ichigo."  
He stares up at her, despairing. She smiles, a little sadly. "When have you ever known her to be selfish?"  
He has no answer to that, so he buries his head in his hands. "Oh, Tatsuki is going to kill me." Peeking out from between his fingers at the shinigami passing around them, he adds. "And when I'm dead she'll follow me to soul society and kill me again." He sighs, and looks up at Rukia. "So what am I supposed to do? Just walk up to him and say, 'Hey, I know we spent the last month locked in a cell trying to kill each other, but do you want to, like, go out or something?'" Ichigo runs his fingers back through his hair. "Oh god, he would laugh so hard - no, he wouldn't even laugh, he would just push up his glasses and _look _at me and I would have to go and crawl up under a _rock_ for the rest of my _life."_  
"Oh, stop acting like a child." Rukia tells him, and Ichigo internally reflects on the degree of similarity between his inner voice and the actual Rukia. "Just _tell _him. Though," she adds. "Hopefully with slightly more eloquence than _that_."  
"You just want to win your bet." He grumbles. She smacks him upside the head.  
"I'm very busy as Captain, and I swear, if you make me come down to the Living World to play relationship counselor, I will make sure that your inevitable confession to Uryu is more embarrassing than you could possibly imagine." She stares at him, and he feels very tiny. "Are we clear?"  
He sighs. "Yes, ma'am."

The next week could best be described as a living hell, and, coming from someone that had actually seen the gates of hell, that was saying something.  
He does try to talk to Uryu, really, he does, so he feels that Rukia should give him some credit. He has two entirely valid reasons for his lack of success: first, Uryu is avoiding him, (not that he could really blame him) so he isn't getting all that many attempts, second, _he's trying to confess that he lo - has fee - is attra - __**likes**__ Ishida freaking Uryu. _  
This was an entirely reasonable obstacle, given that it was, in fact _Ishida freaking Uryu, _and, as such, whenever Ichigo tried to stutter out some vague statement by way of preface to his confession, he tended to fix him with stares of such pure concentrated disdain that Ichigo would swear they could fry ants on the sidewalk (and possibly essential internal organs, as well), and consequently lead to Ichigo suddenly changing the topic to ask about homework or studying or something, anything else.  
Needless to say, there was very little progress being made.  
There was one bright spot though, and that was Orihime and Tatsuki. It was hard to tell at first, because they were ordinarily so close, and had only been more so since Orihime had been rescued, but Ichigo had noticed that the two of them had been more affectionate, recently.  
Okay, so it had really been Keigo that noticed it. Ichigo had his own problems to worry about, alright? He couldn't be watching out for everyone else's … relationship... things.  
In any case, after about a week, their whole class is in agreement: Orihime and Tatsuki are in a relationship.  
This fact was made easier to accept by the incident when a boy in their class made a crack to Orihime about Tatsuki holding her hand, which may have involved insinuations involving the differences between male and female genetaila. Said boy was summarily knocked out cold, after which Tatsuki proceeded to announce to the class that yes, she and Orihime were in a relationship, and if any of them had any problems, she would welcome all inquiries and concerns.  
Okay, the wording on that one may have been slightly different. It may, in fact, have been, "Yeah, I'm dating Orhime, and if any of you assholes have a problem with it, you can deal with me, got it?" Said statement may also have been accompanied by slamming the original offenders face into the desk.  
The relationship was easier to accept then.  
In any case, the two of them seemed almost deliriously happy to be together, and Ichigo was very pleased to see it. His pleasure, was, of course, entirely unbiased by the fact that this meant that Tatsuki would not beat him into a tiny quivering pulp for breaking Orihime's heart. Really, he hadn't thought about that fact at all.  
Ichigo wondered if Rukia had been betting on Orihime and Tatsuki as well. Maybe that would make her happy enough to ignore his total lack of progress.  
He was less than eager to put this theory to the test when she showed up, though.

**AN: For anyone who was bothered by the fact that Orihime and Tatsuki's relationship upgrade was more or less handwaved here, their development will be written out elsewhere… eventually. Really. I promise.**

**Also… no Avengers references here, no sirree, what are you talking about? **


	27. A Confession and a Lie

**AN: I'm not dead! Thank you for your patience.**

"You haven't _told _him yet?"  
"Shout it to the whole world, why don't you?"  
"It's been a _week!"_  
"It's not that easy, okay?"  
"Are you _scared_, Ichigo?"  
"What? No! That's ridiculous."  
"Aw, you're so nervous. Ah, the pangs of first love..."  
"Goddammit, will you keep it down. It's not anything like that, he's avoiding me."  
"So go find him and talk to him."  
"It's not that easy! Who made it your job to tell me what to do, anyway?"  
"You asked for my help, you remember. Just ask if you can walk home with him this afternoon."  
"Are you kidding? Have you met the guy? 'I do not require an escort, Kurosaki.' 'I'm perfectly capable of walking home on my own, Kurosaki.'"  
"See? You already know each other so well. Made for each other, I tell you. Now _get on with it."_  
"Why did I ever think asking you for advice would be a good idea..."  
"My advice is fabulous. It's not my fault you're incompetent."

'Oh, hey, Ishida. Haven't seen you in a while. I'm going to go get some ramen, do you mind if I walk with you for a bit?"  
No. Definitely not. He couldn't even picture the words coming out of his mouth.  
'Hey, Ishida, do you mind? There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about.'  
There was no way in hell he was asking him that, Ishida would look at him like he was an idiot.  
Finally, he settles on the 'drop in beside him with no explanation approach.' Much simpler.  
It takes about two blocks before Ishida finally cracks. "Is there a particular reason you are following me, Kurosaki?"  
Well, here it was. No helping it now. "Well, actually." Ichigo rubs the back of his neck. "There's this... thing, I've been meaning to talk to you about."  
Oh, there it was, right on schedule. The _look. _Ichigo feels like he has roughly the brain capacity of a maggot.  
"Well?" Ishida finally asks, and Ichigo realizes that he's been completely struck dumb by the _look_.  
"Well, I've been thinking about it..." What was that noise? "And, well, just listen, because I think I might..." There was definitely noise coming from the bushes. "There might be this - this thing, going on -" That was music, it had to be, but where - "I think I -"  
His ears were blasted with the chorus, both he and Ishida turned around, searching for the source of the cheesy romantic pop song suddenly pouring out of the bushes. A glimpse of purple eyes gives it away. "RUKIA!"  
When, finally, panting, Ichigo wrests the music player away from Rukia, fighting off the defences of Renji and Tatsuki, he looks around to see that Uryu has disappeared.  
"Goddammit, Rukia,"

He pounds on the door to Uryu's apartment.  
"Ishida, hey Ishida, it's me!  
"Come on, I know you're in there.  
"Look, I'm sorry about Renji and Rukia being idiots. I really do need to talk to you.  
"Seriously, Uryu, open up.  
"Uryu? Are you there?"  
Maybe he really wasn't home. Maybe he hadn't gone straight home, maybe he had gone to buy food, or sewing supplies.  
Maybe.

"Ishida! Hey, are you in there? It's Ichigo.  
"Come on, dude, come out. Everyone's worried about you.  
"Look, no matter how sick you are, you can haul yourself from your bed to the door.  
"Just open up, alright?  
"Seriously, Uryu, there's no way that Rukia and Renji being stupid upset you that much. Right? Come on, they were just goofing around.  
"Look, just get better, okay? I'll see you in class tomorrow."

"Uryu, are you in there? It's me again.  
"I brought the homework from today - you're falling behind. You don't want Ryo to take over the top spot, do you?  
"Oh, come on, there's no way you're going to turn down studying.  
"Right?  
"I'll just leave these here, then. Maybe you can grab them when you're feeling better.  
"I'll see you in class tomorrow, alright?"

"Uryu?  
"Uryu? Are you feeling any better?  
"I got some of my dad's tea and medicine, it should help. Orihime sends … soup, I think, but that might just make you sicker.  
"Look, just unlock the door, please? Or say something? Just so - I can tell the others you're not dead.  
"It can't be that bad, right? You took the homework.  
"I guess I'll just leave this here too.  
"I'll see you in class tomorrow? I, well... nevermind."

"Uryu? Uryu?  
"Come on, just open the door. I know you're in there.  
"Uryu?  
"Come on.  
"Uryu, open the door!  
"I will kick this door down, Ishida, do you hear me? You know I will.  
"Alright, it's for your own damn good."  
A clunk on the floor stops him in his runup. Uryu is standing in the hallway, a bag of groceries having landed next to him on the floor. Ichigo catches terror fleeing across his face before Ishida bends over and picks up the bag. "What on earth are you doing, Kurosaki?"  
"What am _I _doing?" He asks, almost laughing, relief and frustration choking each other as they fight for control. "You haven't been in class all week, and now you're out shopping for groceries?"  
"I've been busy," Ishida states, sidestepping Ichigo to get closer to his door. He cuts off Ichigo's further questions by quipping; "Was there something else you needed, other than to damage my apartment?"  
Oh, right. _That._ "Actually, well, there was the thing I was going to talk to you about earlier." Uryu has his face turned away as he shifts around to get to his door. "When Rukia and Renji interrupted - I mean, I'm sorry about that, really, but it is, I mean, its not really important, but, well, I guess it sort of is, and -" Uryu is fumbling for his keys in his pocket. "Listen, what I'm trying to say is, I think I - I like you." He can feel the heat rushing to his face. Uryu has his back to him, but he hears the keys stop their motion in the lock. "So I just thought - thought you should know." _Oh god that sounded so stupid I'm such an idiot and now he's going to turn around and look at me like I'm some sort of amoeba and I'm going to have to curl up and die somewhere far away goddammit why did I listen to Rukia._  
Uryu's shoulders are stiff, he doesn't say anything. "Uryu?" Ichigo asks, even though he wants nothing more than to run as far away as he can and bury himself somewhere no one will ever see him again.  
Uryu keeps his back to him, head bent over the doorknob. Finally he speaks. "Some... confusion is... understandable, after... extended trauma." His voice is slow, staunchly deliberate. "But that's all it is. Confusion." The key clicks in the lock, final, and Ishida's last words are clipped. "I suggest that you try to forget it."  
And he opens the door and Ichigo is so caught up in going from heady embarrassment to watching his stomach plummet through the floor that he doesn't know what he's doing. "Uryu!"  
He's wrapped his fingers around the slender wrist, and Uryu turns to look at him - finally, finally look at him - like he's been _scalded, _and his brain clicks into overdrive trying to think of what to say.  
"Here, you should - you should take this anyway," And he reaches back, rummaging through his bag for the slim pistol, buried beneath textbooks. "Might come in useful."  
He holds it out in the palm of his hand, watching Uryu stare at it. The blue eyes are in shadow.  
"Thank you," Ishida tells him, stiffly, lifting the pistol from his hand, turning away quickly, sliding through the open door.  
Ichigo stares at the paint on the door, dumbstruck for a second, then finally turns and slams his fist into the wall. "Goddammit."

It is the pistol that breaks him.  
He could have understood, expected anger, expected Ichigo to argue, to ask him what he hell he was talking about. He could have slipped into argument, to cool analysis and barbed jibes as easily as a well tailored suit, and it could have been his disguise, making it easier to lie.  
Because he is a terrible liar, he knows it, and so when Kurosaki Ichigo says "I think I like you," in the hallway in front of his apartment, he hopes desperately that every awful lie he has told has earned him the right to tell one well, convincingly enough, to fix this.  
And it wasn't really a lie, not all of it, because he hadn't said anything about himself. It _was_ probably confusion on Ichigo's part, a misplaced sense of guilt or a bizarre combination of teenage hormones after a month sharing space. (_He has to believe that)_ It was best that Ichigo forget about it, he would be better off. _(Anyone was better than _him_.)_  
But then Ichigo Kurosaki had to turn around and take his wrist and look at him and offer him safety, offer him a way to defend himself.  
Yes, he thinks, anything would have been easier than that.  
He should push it away, tell him he has no need to fight hollows, no need for his protection. It would be easy, to be cold, proud Ishida Uryu. It would make it easier to drift away, no longer to have any responsibilities to that world, not to have any sign that Kurosaki Ichigo cared about him.  
But he takes it anyway.

He can't stay in the apartment.  
He pushes out, into the cold and the dark, hunched in a coat. He strides through pools of light cast out by streetlamps, and forces himself to picture Ichigo with someone else, someone beautiful, and selfless, and head over heels in love. He tries to picture Ichigo happy, and hates himself for only being able to see the brown eyes as Ichigo had taken his wrist.  
The roar startles him, forces him to leap from the pit in his mind.  
Then he starts running.  
The hollow is massive, lumbering along, and his brain reminds him that it looks a little like a komodo dragon, completely, utterly useless, like the pistol thrown on the floor of his apartment, and there is a wall in front of him, a dead end, and the term has never felt more appropriate, and he feels the sudden desire to laugh -

His apartment is dark. His bed feels unusually hard. It's cold.  
This isn't his apartment.  
He drags his memories back as he hauls himself upright. Hollow. Running. Alley.

He looks around, momentarily panicked. The hollow is gone. He is alone.  
His hands are wet. So is his face.  
He staggers out into the light of the nearest street lamp, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, looking down at his hands.  
They are red. So is the corner of cloth where he had wiped his mouth.  
The blood is not his.

**AN: So… That probably wasn't what you were expecting.**

**Apologies for the cliffhanger, but I do have a break coming up, so it shouldn't be as long of a wait next time.**


	28. A Story

**AN: I told you fall break would be productive. **

**This chapter could alternatively be titled "Rukia is surrounded by idiots"**

**Edit: I hope this change helps readability, let me know if it doesn't.**

He can still taste the blood.  
He can still taste the blood, and his hands won't stop shaking.  
_There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. _He insists to himself. _There is - _  
But no matter how hard he tries, he cannot see one.  
_(One without him wearing a bone mask, tearing into the hollow with his own teeth, devouring -)_  
He stands in front of the sink, scrubbing his hands of every last trace of blood.  
When he looks down, his hands are still red.  
This time, the blood is his.

"Well?"  
He jumps. "What the hell are you doing here?" A growl.  
"Oh, so unfriendly." Rukia kicks her legs out and sprawls across his bed. "I've been in your room plenty of times before, what's the bother?"  
Ichigo huffs, scraping his chair across the floor as he drags it around and slumps down onto it, chin resting on the back. "I thought you would be busy, _Kuchiki-taichou._"  
"Well, I had to see if I could collect on my bet, didn't I?" She tells him, feet twitching. Ichigo presses his forehead into the back of the chair chair. "Well?"  
He closes his eyes, fingers tight around the back of the chair. All he wants to do is hit something, and then curl up in his bed and not think, but Kuchiki Rukia is on his bed and he cannot deal with this right now. "What on earth makes you think I even talked to him?" He forces out. "No one's seen the idiot for days."  
Rukia leans back, sinking even further into his pillows. "I felt a disturbance in the force."  
Ichigo groans. "God, who let you watch Star Wars? It was Orihime, wasn't it? Please tell me it wasn't Orihime."  
"Tell you, I will not." Ichigo moans, leaning backward to rest his elbows against his desk, one hand over his forehead.  
"Was it really that bad?" When he looks up at the question, Rukia is sitting up, cross legged, watching him intently.  
"Hmgh?" He makes a vaguely interrogative noise.  
"Well, obviously you talked to him, and obviously it didn't go _well, _or you wouldn't be this," She waves a hand vaguely to encompass his condition, "_Grumpy,_"  
Ichigo stares at the ceiling for a moment, then sighs, "God," He mutters, leaning forward again and tucking his head against the back of the chair. "I don't know why I ever listen to you."  
"Oh?"  
He looks at her, hollow and numb, every muscle feeling ten times heavier. "I told him. He's not interested. You were wrong, and I'm an idiot." With that, he lets his head drop back into his arms.  
"What do you mean, 'not interested'?"  
"I mean not interested!" He practically snarls at her. "Told me to 'forget about it'. You were _wrong, _and I swear to god, Rukia, if you start talking about your bet I will throw you out of here."  
Rukia goes very quiet, and after a few seconds he begins to feel guilt bleeding through his anger. "Rukia?"  
"'Forget about it'..." She mutters to herself, apparently not having heard him, then her head snaps up. "Tell me what he said, exactly."  
"What?" He is taken aback, but she continues to stare at him determinately. "I dunno - he said something about me being confused, 'cause of 'trauma', then he told me to forget about it." He stares down at the floor.  
When he glances up, her head is tilted downward, and her eyes are pained. Then she looks up at him. "Ichigo, do you remember when your mother died?"  
"Of course I do." Ichigo tells her, confused and not a little angry at her for bringing up the memory.  
"You felt guilty. You blamed yourself."  
It is not a question, but he answers anyway, low. "Yes."  
She looks at him, head tilted slightly, then nods. "Then you will understand."  
"Understand what?" She stands up. "Rukia, what are you talking about?"  
"I need to go. There's not time to explain right now."  
"What?" He glares at her suddenly. "Rukia, if you're thinking about messing with this again -"  
"Ichigo," she says, and her voice is quiet and level. "I understand."  
And he starts to say, "What?" But then he remembers;  
Rukia hadn't wanted to be rescued.  
She looks at him, and nods, and closes the door, and he sits on the bed and wonders who Rukia had lost.

The knock on the door is unexpected. For a moment, he is afraid it is Ichigo, and he freezes in his chair, because if he has to talk to him again he will break and if he breaks he doesn't know if he'll hit Ichigo or kiss him.  
"Uryu? Uryu, I know you're in there."  
The voice is so unexpected, he hardly recognizes it, but he couldn't be blamed for not expecting Rukia Kuchiki to show up at his door.  
He gets up quickly, schooling his face into polite interest as he opens the door. "Kuchiki-taichou."  
"Ishida-kun," she replies formally, then smiles in a vague, tired way. "I brought food. Can I come in?"  
"Of course," He tells her, quite taken aback by the proffered bag, stepping aside to leave the doorway open. "There was no need -"  
"Oh, its no trouble. You weren't here when I dropped by earlier, so I thought I'd go get us some dinner and come back." She strides through the doorway as if completely at home, while Uryu darts across the room to grab pillows for the floor - the lone chair being too awkward for conversation - and plates from the sink. It is not very hospitable atmosphere, and his embarrassment at the sparseness of his accommodations almost covers his confusion as to her presence.  
If Rukia is taken aback by the limited seating, she doesn't show it, settling onto the pillow on the floor as if she were lowering herself onto a throne. Opening the still warm boxes, she takes the plate Uryu offers with a slight nod of her head.  
When they are both settled with food on their plates, Ishida broaches the topic as carefully as possible. "Kuchiki-taichou, though I appreciate your time, if your visit concerns Kurosaki Ichigo, I can assure you -"  
Rukia withdraws the fork from her mouth. "Please, call me Rukia." She dabs at her mouth, quite unnecessarily, with the napkin. "And all I would like to do is tell you a story, is that alright?"  
And he's already invited her in and she has brought him food, and it would be incredibly rude to say no, and more importantly there is an edge in her tone that indicates this isn't a question. "Of course, Ku - Rukia."  
She sits back on her pillow, another forkful of dinner in her mouth, paused, as if wondering how best to begin. "When I was younger - well, well before you were born," She starts, looking at him sharply, and he feels for a moment that he is sitting at his grandfather's knee again. "The lieutenant of the thirteenth division was named Kaien. I had just joined the division, and he, well, he sort of took me under his wing." A chagrined smile quirks the edge of her mouth, she looks down. "I had the worst crush on him. It was really terrible."  
She shakes her head, looking vaguely to the floor, temporarily stilled in memory. "He went to fight a hollow. It had killed his wife." She says it quite matter of factly, he wonders how much effort it takes to keep her tone so level. "The captain and I came with him, and it took him over."  
Rukia looks up at him, meets his eyes finally, and he is seeing black eyes and horns and a roar is ringing in his ears. "It took him over, and I killed him." The words could have been forged from lead. "And, he thanked me for it. Before he went.  
"And that stayed with me, you understand. It stayed with me when I was in prison in soul society, it stayed with me after that, when we went to Hueco Mundo. It took a long time to realize that he wouldn't have blamed me, that it was the right thing to do.  
"But that didn't fix it, you understand. I didn't just feel guilty because I killed him. What I felt guilty about was that when I took the sword, I wasn't thinking about what he would have wanted, I was thinking about how much it hurt me to see his face in pain.  
"And I thought that if I was that selfish once, how could I ever deserve someone else, if I would only treat them selfishly again?"  
She sighs, pausing, then she looks up and smiles at him. "I took some persuading. But," she continues, finally taking another bite of her food. "eventually I figured out that we can't let our histories define us. You know that as well as anyone."  
"And why is that?" He asks stiffly.  
"You're a Quincy, eating dinner with a shinigami captain," she replies flippantly, slurping a noodle in a distinctly un - captain like manner, but then gravity falls back around. "You know that Ichigo lost his mother."  
His reply is flat and toneless. "Yes." _(He doesn't want to hear this, he doesn't want to think about this, he doesn't need to be reminded of how very, very unworthy he is)_  
"He blamed himself, too. He felt guilty, part of him" she admits "probably still does. I know what happened to your grandfather." She tells him, violet eyes boring into his. "You have more in common than you think."  
"No, we don't."  
He has startled her. He stands up holding his cup, ostensibly to refill it at the sink, but he has to get away, he can't look at her as he says this.  
"Kurosaki Ichigo and I have nothing in common." He repeats it, cementing it once more for himself. "Ichigo lost his mother, and he took it as a reason to protect his family, to protect everyone he could, to make sure that wouldn't repeat.  
"I lost my grandfather, and I was so terrified of my guilt I made it into hatred, hatred toward the shingaimi. He wouldn't have wanted me to hate anyone, and that hatred would have hurt others, if _Kurosaki Ichigo _hadn't been there to save them.  
"Do you understand, _Kuchiki - taichou_?" And now he finally turns around to face her, and the shock and the hurt on her face doesn't even make him flinch. "I am not guilty because I failed to save my grandfather. I'm guilty because I _dishonored his legacy._" His hands are shaking, he looks away. "Neither you nor Kurosaki Ichigo have ever been guilty of that."  
"But you still love him." Her voice is quiet. He turns away.  
"You presume a great deal."  
(He doesn't say no.)  
(He has always been a terrible liar)

**AN: So, a possible explanation for last week's cliffhanger… hmmm. Everything will be properly explained eventually, I promise – you're supposed to be confused right now.**

**And for those of you who were going "WTF, Uryu? What is your problem?" last chapter… well, this should have cleared that up. **

**There was a quote going around about Tony Stark (Iron Man) that applies really well to Ishida "He's one of those people who hates himself but still thinks he's better than everyone else."**

**Tell me you can't see it.**

**I honestly don't know how the Star Wars references got in there… Rukia just writes herself sometimes. I do love the idea of Orihime and Rukia and Tatsuki having a Star Wars movie night. (You did see Orihime's robot drawings towards the beginning of the manga, right? There's no way she's not a Star Wars fan.)**

**Long AN is long, sorry.**


	29. Finale

**AN: Last chapter folks! Yes, I know – but after some discussion with my beta reader I decided that the story threads I have left to tie up will need their own story. So you guys get a sequel! Besides, I think you guys will like this chapter…**

**Thanks for all of you who have stuck with this long ride. I appreciate all of your support. I hope you all enjoyed it.**

Uryu is back at school the next day.  
They don't talk.

"Ishida."  
He looks around. It is Arisawa Tatsuki.  
The universe, he is sure, is delighting in endlessly tormenting him.  
"Arisawa-san,"  
She settles herself on top of the desk beside him, where he is taking lunch by himself. It has become his habit in the past few weeks.  
"How can I help you?" He asks stiffly.  
"I wanted," She stops, swallows, different expressions flickering across her face. "I wanted to thank you."  
This is perhaps the last thing he ever expected to hear out of Arisawa's mouth. He fiddles with his utensils. "I - I have done nothing that requires your thanks."  
"You stayed."  
When he looks up at her, her face is schooled into an impassive expression, a warrior's mask, but the muscles around her eyes are tight. "Orihime... she's told me a bit about what happened. You could have taken Ichigo and ran, at any time, and left her behind. But you didn't."  
"Of course not," He tells her, an unimportant placeholder. She continues.  
"She's told me about Soul Society too. You protected her there. You protected her when I didn't." In her face, Ishida sees a reflection of all the self loathing he has ever felt. "And I will never, never stop owing you for that."  
There is a moment of silence, where she stares down at the desk. "I misjudged you." And she looks up and meets his eyes. "You're a good person."  
He turns away. "What I did - I - I didn't do it for selfless reasons."  
"Wanting him to be happy isn't selfish, Ishida." She insists, and when he tilts his head slightly to look at her she meets his eyes, arms folded across her chest. "I'd know. I've felt the same way."  
He stares back down and shakes his head. "It's not the same. Besides," He reminds himself. "I'm the last person who'd make him happy."  
"Oh please," She snorts with such derision that it forces him to look up. "Don't be so arrogant. Don't you think he can decide that for himself?" She glares at him. "Besides, he's grumpy enough now, and when Ichigo's unhappy Orihime's unhappy, and quite frankly I don't like it when Orihime's unhappy. So for god's sakes quit feeling sorry for yourself and fix this, you hear me?" She glares at him, before turning around.  
Tatsuki pauses in the doorframe, and when she speaks her voice is slightly more level. "Not everything is about what you think you deserve, Uryu."  
And she leaves him at the desk, to bury his head in his arms.

In the end, that's not what breaks him.  
What breaks him is this:  
Ichigo surrounded by his friends, sitting on the desks before class. Their laughter fills up the room, chatting, happy, and Uryu is secure in the knowledge that _they don't need -_  
And then Ichigo turns his head, just slightly, mouth open, like he was going to say something, something to someone who wasn't there. He shuts it again quickly, and for just a second he looks -  
_miserable - lost - angry - despairing -_  
Oh, _hell._

However, he is, of course, Ishida Uryu, and if he is going to do this, he is going to do it _properly._  
He puts his other projects on hold and starts drawing.  
The design comes easily, the fabric, less so, but he takes the hit to his pocketbook with equanimity.  
It was bigger than his usual designs, and more intricate, but that was how it should be. (Who needs sleep, anyway?)  
Finally, it is finished.  
And he waits.  
He waits for nearly a week until he finds the right opportunity.

Ichigo grimaces as his notes scatter all over the floor.  
"Kurosaki-kun?" Orihime looks over the desk at the mess.  
"You guys go ahead," He tells her. "I'll catch up in a sec."  
He hunches over to gather up the papers. By the time they are all back in his bag, the room is empty.  
He stands up.  
"Oh, good."  
He almost jumps at the voice.  
Ishida's head is poking around the edge of the door. "You'll do. Come on."  
"What?" He asks, but Ishida has disappeared. He jogs after him. "Ishida, what the hell is going on?"  
"It'll only take a second. Hurry up."  
"But what -?" They finally arrive at the door of the arts classroom, Ishida pushes it open.  
He stares around for a second while Ishida strides over to a mannequin draped in a long black coat. "Here," He tells him, pulling the coat off and holding it out to Ichigo. "I need someone to try this on so I can see if I've hemmed it properly. You'll do."  
"I'm not a fashion model, Ishida," Ichigo snaps.  
Ishida opens his mouth, closes it, and then simply says. "Ichigo."  
He takes the coat. As he looks closer, he sees the long red cross emblazoned across the front. _Typical Quincy._  
The dark red lining throws him for a moment, though, and it takes him a second to realize what it reminds him of. _It looks just like my Bankai coat._  
Uryu is staring at him as he fastens up the front of the coat, and Ichigo is sure he is missing something, because last he checked Uryu didn't make coats modeled after his Bankai or ask him to try clothing on or even talk to him.  
He fidgets after he fixes the last fastener, finally resolving his anxiety by shoving his hands in the deep pockets.  
His right hand runs into something hard.  
Ishida is pacing around him, looking intently at seams. Ichigo pulls out the lump from his pocket.  
It is a chocolate.  
His favorite.  
He looks up at Uryu. His face is turned down, but he is blushing.  
Everything clicks.  
"You _like _me?"  
Uryu looks up at him, then back down. He adjusts his glasses.  
That's a good enough answer.  
"You _like_ me!" Ichigo crows with laughter, jabbing a finger at Uryu. "After all your bullshit -"  
"Yes, well,"  
"You actually like me! Hah!"  
"Could you please -"  
"_Ishida Uryu."_  
"For god's sakes, Kurosaki,"  
"likes,"  
"You're acting like a moron, Kurosaki."  
"_Me_!"  
"Oh, shut up."  
"Nah-uh. You like me too much."  
"Will you give it a rest?"  
"You like me!"  
"Shut up!"  
And then Uryu has grabbed him by the front of his coat and his glasses are knocking against the bridge of his nose, and his brain short circuits for a second because _Ishida Uryu is kissing him._  
And he puts his hands on his back and tilts his head so their noses aren't running into each other and opens his eyes -  
"Rukia! _Give me that camera!"_

_fin_


End file.
